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VP Mnangagwa

Patrick Chitumba and Munyaradzi Musiiwa
Government is harmonising 11 laws to facilitate the ease of doing business in the country, Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa said yesterday. Addressing members of the business community in Kwekwe during the official commissioning of a $3,5 million Dendairy Long Life Milk factory, VP Mnangagwa said Government was prioritising making Zimbabwe a country with laws that make it easy for investors to do business.

He was on a two-day tour of the manufacturing industries in the Midlands province. He said harmonisation of the laws was aimed at attracting more investment in the country. “We have an inter-ministerial committee, which I head, to facilitate the ease of doing business.

“We have assigned the Ministry of Industry and Commerce to engage players in that sector and make recommendations so that we make laws that promote the ease of doing business.”

“We have so far moved about 18 ranks in the positive in the world rankings on the ease of doing business and so far we have 11 pieces of legislatives that are going through Parliament to change the way of doing business,” he said.

VP Mnangagwa said plans were at an advanced stage to decentralise registration of companies and deeds offices to enable potential business owners to register and operate if they meet the requisite regulations.

“In the past, it would take 90 days to register a company and in some instances it was only (done in) Harare and Bulawayo.

“Now, we have decentralised that and we are setting up offices in each and every town. “We don’t want our investors and potential business people to go through long processes in setting up their businesses by engaging one ministry after another.

“Now, all this is now being done under one roof,” said the Vice President. VP Mnangagwa said it was incumbent upon Government to give support and protection to productive industries so that they remain viable and continue to grow.

He said the manufacturing sector, like the cooking oil and dairy industries needed Government protection from imports, which he said had threatened their viability. In this light, he said Government had put in place duty and levies to deter would-be dairy or cooking oil importers to protect the sector.

“There is need for Government to tighten screws on imports of products that are locally accessible, to protect the local industry.” VP Mnangagwa added: “Government will give support to local industries, particularly those that are productive and has opened lines of credit to assist ailing industries.

“We should find more and more of our domestic products in our retail shops and supermarkets and to do so, we need to give priority in terms of support to these companies that manufacture products for our domestic consumption. We cannot continue importing products that can be found locally.”

He said the economy was on the right path towards moving out of the doldrums and that Government was happy with companies that were performing, but was concerned with the ailing ones and those that collapsed.

Dendairy chief executive Mr Daryl Coetzee said they had invested more than $10 million into the Kwekwe dairy plant. He said the long life milk factory was part of the $10 million project with room for potential growth.

“We are now supplying 70 percent of the monthly dairy products needs of the country. With the new investment, we are also able to produce five million litres of milk every month,” he said.