Zim improves ‘ease of doing business’

via Zim improves ‘ease of doing business’ – DailyNews Live Ndakaziva Majaka • 18 December 2015

HARARE – Zimbabwe has reduced the number of days it takes to register a company from 91 to 30 days as the country moves to improve the its ease of Doing Business environment, a government official has said.

The permanent secretary for Justice Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Virginia Mabhiza, yesterday told delegates at an Ease of Doing Business workshop facilitated by the Office of the President that the move had been meant to accommodate investors.

“In our committee we were charged with reducing the period of time it takes to start a business. We were working with a period of from 90 days, and the task at hand was to cut this to 31 days by December 21, 2015,”she said.

“While we have not yet seen the full automation of the company registration process, I can say that the company registration process period is now 31 days and in some cases it can even be less than this,” Mabhiza added.

The permanent secretary was delivering the results as sponsor of the Starting A Business Thematic Working Group formed after government in partnership the World Bank and the United Kingdom DFID had embarked on a programme to come up with a rapid implementation of a raft of investment reforms within a period on 100 days.

This process saw a taskforce team charged with implementing the agreed Ease of Doing Business strategies within a framework of rapid results approach. Other thematic working groups were the Property Registering and Construction and Protecting Investors.

Mabhiza said her group had also worked on reducing the cost of registering a business in the country.

“While Harare was the pilot in the first 100 days, this is going to be spread across the other provinces in the next 100 days.

“As we speak the streamlining of the policy saw the significant reduction in company registration costs by upto half,” she said.

Before the new development, it used to take 91 days to register a new business in Zimbabwe at a cost of $1 515.