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
