The Sunday Mail
WHEN it comes to improving the doing business environment, Zimbabwe has had to fly where other countries crawled.
That’s because there is a different standard for Zimbabwe, at least since 1999.
The agrarian reforms at the turn of the millennium to democratise land tenure strained relations between Harare on one hand, and London and Washington on the other.
Despite some of the reforms instituted by Government to promote an environment that can ably promote investment, Zimbabwe unsurprisingly is still classified as a hermit State.
The National Economic Consultative Forum, a local think, has since 2005 — when the maiden Zimbabwe National Competitiveness Report was compiled — guided most interventions that have been made by policy makers thus far. To date, two reports have been produced, and they are very revealing.
The 2016 enquiry in particular focuses mainly on the competitiveness of the manufacturing and financial services sector — two key sectors than considerably enable economic growth.
Status of other reforms
Central Government
National Competitiveness Commission Bill — Signed
Deeds Registries Amendment Bill — Signed
Judicial Laws Amendment Bill — Signed
Public Procurement Act — Signed
Special Economic Zones Act — Signed
Banking Amendment Act — Signed
Shop Licensing Act — In Parliament
Regional Town and Planning Act — In Parliament
Estates Administrators Act — In Parliament
Shop Licensing Act — In Parliament
Insolvency Act — In Parliament
Local Government
Renewing business licence while customer waits
New business licence takes less than two days
Payments done through mobile platforms, can be staggered
Applications done online, physical visits
Shop/ bottle store advertising eliminated
One-stop-shop for approval of building plans
Takes below two weeks to approve building plans
An expeditious exercise conducted in 2005 by the institute meant to analyse institutional strengths and weaknesses of the current framework in promoting investment naturally resulted in the formation of the National Competitiveness Commission and the National Productivity Institute.
The Presidency — through President Mugabe’s 10-Point Plan — has since crystallised the route that has to be followed to provide the environment needed by capital to thrive. But, obviously, Zimbabwe’s economic challenges run deep: it has taken almost 20 months to address some of the challenges.
Three Bills — National Competitiveness Commission Bill, the Deeds Registries Amendment Bill and the Judicial Laws Amendment Bill – have since been signed into law.
The Public Procurement Bill awaits Presidential assent and could be ready by month end.
Business Weekly gathers the new Companies Act will be ready next month (July).
“It (Companies Bill) has gone through the AG’s office and they are currently busy with peer review; in other words, making the necessary consultations to make sure that it satisfies all key stakeholders,” said Deputy Chief Secretary in the Office of the President and Cabinet Dr Ray Ndhlukula recently.
“But otherwise, it’s almost done; I expect that by end of July we will have a new Companies Act in place.”
Consultations have been made with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Zimbabwe, the Institute of Chartered Secretaries of Zimbabwe, the Bankers Association of Zimbabwe, SMEs, and the Employers’ Confederation of Zimbabwe.