Harare - If there were any doubts about how bad the economic situation is in Zimbabwe, the results released by Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE) - listed companies in the last few days should put them to rest.
As if they were working in a cartel to manipulate their financial results, most ZSE-listed entities reported heavy losses for the full year ended December 31 2014.
Out of the 13 listed companies that reported their results in last four working days, ten of them reported heavy losses.
Reading commentaries accompanying most of the results, a familiar theme was evident. “2014 was another very difficult year for the Group,” said Lovemore Chihota, chairperson of listed miner RioZim Limited.
Chihota added that “the economic environment in the country remained fragile with an unsustainably high cost of debt, subdued export performance, lack of competitiveness attributable to infrastructure deficits, high utility costs and massive de-industrialisation.”
One can copy and paste this statement to accompany any of the results released during the period under review and it would be a perfect fit.
For instance, there is little difference between the above statement and the one from another listed entity, manufacturer of asbestos and roofing tiles Turnall Holdings.
Chairperson Hebert Nkala had this to say about the operating environment: “The operating environment continued to experience an array of challenges, notably, receding aggregate demand, liquidity constraints and poor funding of infrastructural projects.”
These sentiments were echoed by ZHL chairperson Ben Kumalo, who said the “operating environment was characterised by acute liquidity shortages, low productivity, limited external capital inflows, depressed demand, underperforming exports worsened by low international prices and utility supply constraints".
The array of loss makers is diverse, ranging from media houses to mining houses, from the hospitality industry to the construction industry, and from the banking sector to the manufacturing sector.
Results coming in are so bad that one can randomly pick any industry and be assured that two or more companies are operating at a loss.
The table below shows the results released by ZSE-listed stocks in the past five working days.