BY BYRON MUTINGWENDE

There is need to reform the municipal licensing regime in an effort to streamline business registration and improve the ease of doing business in the country, it has emerged.

This emerged at a workshop held at Rainbow Towers Hotel in Harare on Wednesday organized by the Zimbabwe Investment Authority (ZIA) in collaboration with United States Agency for International Development (USAID-SERA) and City of Harare under the theme “Towards Excellence in Municipal Licensing and Business Facilitation” to conclude the reform process for municipal licensing.

Speaking at the workshop Christopher Chingosho,the deputy minister of local government said local authorities should speedily review and harmonise the procedures required in setting up businesses.
He said Zimbabwe must be able to attract investment and not always continue receiving negative rankings and comments.

“The information coming to me shows that City of Harare shop licensing requirements account for more than half the burden of starting a business, as measured by Doing Business. Zimbabwe was noted to have nine steps for setting up a new business, and four of the nine procedures involve municipal licences.

“I am further informed that it takes a total of 90 days to complete this registration and municipal procedures are responsible for 54 of the 90 days required, which is 60 percent of the total. Lastly it costs $940 to set up a new enterprise in Zimbabwe and municipal licensing costs take again 60 percent of the total costs as reported in the 2015 Doing Business report,” he said.

Zimbabwe currently occupies the lowest rung on the World Bank Doing Business rankings positioned as 171 out of 189 economies, and 180 on the Starting a Business radar, hence these deliberate efforts by the government to improve the investment climate to attract the much needed foreign capital.

These reforms have been reformed by a 2014 Study done by ZIA with the support of USAID-SERA on the process of “Starting a Business” in Zimbabwe as a noble contribution towards improving the ease of doing business environment in the country.

The study revealed that more than 60% of bottlenecks of doing business in Zimbabwe are accounted for by the bureaucratic business licensing system, hence reforming the business licensing system at the municipal level will significantly improve the ease of doing business.

In this regard and in an attempt to mitigate the risk of prolonging an unattractive investment regime, the City of Harare recently took the initiative to map the entire municipal licensing process documenting the actual costs, procedures and processes involved in municipal licensing as part of an evidence-based research exercise with the support of USAID-SERA in conjunction with ZIA.

In agreement with Chingosho, Harare mayor Bernard Manyenyeni called for an end in the duplication of functions by many departments responsible for licensing in order to speed up the process.

An economic consultant Mike Nyamazana bemoaned the fact that Zimbabwe was an over-regulated economy whereby it required about 18, eight of which are issued by a local authority, at an estimated cost of more than $3 000.

“A retailer requires a restaurant, butchery or meat traders, bakery, fishmonger, seed trading, vet chemicals, Potraz, tourism and other related licences. It is necessary to have regulations but they should be effective and not come at the expense of the business.”