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The Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) yesterday tasked the Ministry of Industry and Commerce and the country’s trade promotion body, ZimTrade to expeditiously craft and implement strategies to boost the country’s exports. Zimbabwe has in the past decade registered negative yearly trade balance of an average of $3 billion.

Participants at the ZimTrade 2016 Exporters Conference yesterday complained about winding bureaucratic requirements and high export licence fees as the major factors hindering export growth. Jon Walden, a customs and trade facilitation exporter at British firm, Crowne Agents, said there were over nine documents required for one to export goods.

“The requirements for one to export are just too many and some need to be synchronised,” he said.

The documents include the bill of entry, bill on of landing, commercial invoice, export permit, packaging list and phytosantiary certificate. ZimTrade chief executive Sithembile Pilime said the plethora of permits made local goods expensive to export.

“Our products are too expensive to compete on the domestic and international markets,” she said, adding as a result of the uncompetitiveness, value added goods were “disappearing” from the list of Zimbabwean exports, now dominated by raw materials and commodities.

Roadblocks and other inspections were also frustrating businesses resulting in loss of business in sectors such as horticulture, she said. Mrs Pilime said it was imperative for government to set up a “one stop shop” for export and import documentation to reduce bottlenecks faced by exporters.

In response, Deputy Chief Secretary in the Office of the President Dr Ray Ndhlukula said ZimTrade and the Ministry of Industry and Commerce must adopt a rapid results approach to dealing with challenges faced by exporters.

“The OPC is there to assist in the resolution of challenges that exporters are facing,” he said.

“If we adopt a rapid results approach we will see a vast difference in the next 100 days.”

He said the system would also complement the ease of doing business approach that the OPC was spearheading aimed at reducing hurdles and costs of setting up businesses in the country to attract investment. The conference ran under the theme: “Maximising competitive advantage to drive export led growth”. – New Ziana.