By Evans Dakwa, News Editor
In an bid to improve the ease of doing business and cut unnecessary red tape, Finance Minister Prof. Mthuli Ncube has announced a six-month national review of levies, licenses, fees, and permits—starting with the agriculture sector—in a bold move to ease the burden on Zimbabwean businesses.
The initiative done at the behest of President Emmerson Mnangagwa, seeks to simplify regulatory requirements, cut red tape, and reduce compliance costs, with a strong focus on aligning with regional best practices.
With the Zimbabwean economy dominated by the SMEs most of whom are informal, the move is expected to make it easier for the thriving small business to go the formal route by reducing the number of and prices of regulatory requirements.
Specific fee adjustments for the agriculture sector are expected to be revealed by the end of next week, with reviews for other sectors to follow soon after.
Announcing the the development, Professor Ncube said the exercise will run through the second half of 2025 until December.
“This is not a sprint but a marathon, so we are going to basically going to focus on this in the second half of this year until December, We will be making a series of announcements sector by sector to make sure all the critical sectors are covered and we should by next week conclude on the agricultural sector and announcements will follow,”said Professor Mthuli.
He also clarified that this move does not entail a fiscal policy shift by Government saying, “It’s not necessarily a policy shift in terms of fiscal this is meant to address the cost of doing business in the country, It’s about the regulatory costs.”
According to the Finance Minister and data from ZIMSTAT, the informal or non compliant sector has grown all the time and there is need to collect more revenue from that sector. By making formalization more accessible and affordable, the government aims to integrate the informal sector into the mainstream economy through tax compliance incentives and reduced regulatory costs.
In the exercise, the Government has identified 12 key sectors which underpins economy Zimbabwe for this ease of doing business review including agriculture, retail, tourism, transport, energy, manufacturing, health, broadcasting, telecommunications, liquor, construction, and financial services.
The review is motivated by the need to reduce the multiplicity, duplication and fragmentation of regulatory charges that currently exist across these sectors.