Govt dithers on ease of doing business laws

GOVERNMENT is yet to amend 22 pieces of legislations in 

line with efforts to address the ease of doing export 

business in Zimbabwe under the Rapid Results Approach 

initiative.

The rapid result initiative ends on June 14, 2017.

In line with this initiative, the amendments of the 

legislations seek to address the issues of high cost 

production and complex procedures and the target is to 

reduce time and cost of exporting by 50%.

Speaking at the Ease of Doing Export Business Using the 

Rapid Results Approach Phase Two: 100 Days Mid-term 

Review Workshop, export regulations thematic working 

group team leaders Benison Ntini said there were 22 

Statutory Instruments (SIs) that needed to be amended, 

but there are challenges of commitment on 

implementation of recommendations by relevant 

authorities.

“We have a nightmare in the procedures and processes 

and changing those regulations is a nightmare. We have 

identified 22 regulations that need to be changed. We 

didn’t come up with the SI, but we suggested the 

changes. Procedures and processes are a nightmare to 

deal with regulations,” Ntini said.

“We have identified all the statutory instruments but 

getting them gazetted it’s not done.”

Some of the SI includes Statutory Instrument 8 of 1996, 

Statutory Instrument 350 of 1993, Statutory Instrument 

140 of 2013, SI 9 of 2004, Section 7, Statutory 

Instrument 59 of 1997, Statutory Instrument 126 of 2014 

among many others needs to be in line with the current 

trends of doing business.

He said progress on milestones were currently at 82% 

complete, proposal laws to be amended are 70% complete, 

deliverables at 78%, processes and procedures to 

support the reform are currently at 85%.

Export capacity thematic working group leader, Sali 

Khan said the development partners were willing to 

provide financial and technical assistance to support 

exports as long as they engaged on time. He said the 

Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) was willing to boost 

production capacity and extend further finance 

facilities and export incentives provided evidence-

based recommendations were put forward from industry.

“We have engaged and lobby RBZ to prioritise exporters 

in foreign currency allocations with proposal for 

introduction of a 25% export retention scheme to cover 

working capital requirements.

On our engagement with RBZ was good, there were 

misconceptions held by the industry that banks are not 

willing to prioritise industry,” Khan said.

He said consultations with exporters were underway for 

evidence-based proposal for submission to RBZ, to come 

up with an incentive structure for recommendation, with 

a view to increase the 5% export incentive up to 10%.

Commenting on the results to date, Khan said progress 

on milestones was 50% complete, proposals 60% and the 

progress against targeted goals are at 49%.

ZimTrade chief executive officer, Sithembile Pilime 

said there were serious commitments made in the first 

100 days and the message coming from yesterday’s 

presentations by the two chairs showed that “we have 

not made any real progress”.

“I would like to preface my comments by looking at our 

current trade performance based on the latest figures 

from ZimStat exports declined by 13,05% when we compare 

the figure for March 2017 to the January 2017 figure 

while comparatively, imports increased by 37,56% over 

the same period and not surprisingly, the trade deficit 

worsened by 141% over the same period,” Pilime said.

“These trade figures paint a worrisome trend; it is 

clear that our dire situation demands serious 

commitment to address the trade regulatory and export 

capacity issues.”

BY TARISAI MANDIZHA