The South African consumer goods distributor confirmed that it had sold its two Makro Zimbabwe stores to retail group OK Zimbabwe.
“Zimbabwe hasn’t been consolidated for years; they’ve never received dividends from it and it has actually become nuisance value.
“Massmart’s two stores were doing maybe a turnover of 100 million rand a year. It took up far too much of their time,” the retail analyst told BusinessLive.
Last year, CE Grant Pattison indicated that the group might disinvest from Zimbabwe if the controversial indigenisation bill was implemented.
“The thing that we need from the Zimbabwean government is to agree whether that’s (the indigenisation bill) law or not.
“If the indigenisation bill is left as it is, we’ll have to pull out,” Pattison told a national Consumer Goods Council of SA annual conference in Johannesburg last October.
Investors have been wary, given the uncertainty over the bill, which states that foreign firms investing in Zimbabwe must cede 51% of their shares to indigenous locals. — BusinessLive.
