Government to sustain ease of doing business reforms
The Government believes sustaining the ease of doing business reforms plays an important role in creating an environment conducive to entrepreneurship and investment and allows the country to attract both domestic and foreign investors.
According to the Budget Strategy Paper: 2025, Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion Minister Professor Mthuli Ncube, said sustaining ease of doing business also creates a favourable climate for innovation and development of new businesses.
“During 2025, the Government will develop a policy framework that supports sustainable business growth and enables entrepreneurs, both local and foreign to operate with increased ease and efficiency.
“Priority will be on streamlining administrative procedures that facilitate business approvals in an efficient and transparent manner,” he said in the paper.
He added that focus will be on establishing a robust One Stop Investment Service Center (OSISC) through the Zimbabwe Investment Development Agency (ZIDA) that acts as a single cohesive structure, providing prompt, efficient and transparent services to investors regarding issuance of business approvals, permits and licences.
Mthuli said these will remove bottlenecks faced by local and foreign investors in establishing and running businesses in Zimbabwe.
ZIDA has since established several collaborations in order to foster ease of doing business through expediting registration and licensing of new businesses including with the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA).
ZIDA is the government’s investment promotion agency, responsible for promoting and facilitating domestic and foreign investment in the country, while ZIMRA is the government’s revenue collection agency, mandated to assess, collect revenue, facilitate trade and travel, and enforce the payment of taxes, levies, royalties, and duties for the country.
During the first quarter of 2024, the agency also made significant strides in partnerships that contributed to creating a vibrant national investment ecosystem and successfully signing collaboration agreements with ZB Financial Holdings, Ecobank Zimbabwe, and a tripartite memorandum of understanding with ZIMTRADE and Zambia Development Agency.
Experts believe constant engagement between businesses, the government, and local authorities is critical to improving the country’s business environment.
Economies are ranked on their ease of doing business, and a high ease of doing business ranking means the regulatory environment is more conducive for businesses to thrive without many hindrances.
According to the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce (ZNCC), one of its primary areas of engagement with the central and local governments has been the cost and ease of doing business.
“The more cumbersome and costly it becomes to be a compliant business operation, the more we push established as well as start-up business enterprises into becoming informal operators,” said the Chamber’s president, Tapiwa Karoro, recently.
He noted that areas that require objective review in this regard include the tax regime, operating license application and renewal processes and fees, the plethora of statutory instruments (SI), and the establishment of policy consistency. ebsnessweekl
