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Africa Moyo Deputy News Editor
Zimbabwe has improved its Ease of Doing Business rankings by 15 places for 2020, driven by good performances on starting a business, streamlining approvals for construction permits and a reduction of the business licensing fee by Harare Municipality.
In a statement yesterday, Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet Dr Misheck Sibanda said he was “happy to inform the nation that Zimbabwe improved its ranking of Ease of Doing Business by 15 places from 155 to 140/190 and thus made it into the exclusive list of top 20 reformers globally”.

He said Zimbabwe made starting a business easier by improving online name search and reducing the Harare Municipality business licensing fee.

“Dealing with construction permits was also made faster by streamlining plan approvals. Property registration was also made easier by reducing the time to transfer property and enhancing transparency by publishing official statistics on land disputes for the previous calendar year.

“Zimbabwe strengthened access to credit by giving secured creditors absolute priority during insolvency proceedings and made resolving insolvency easier by introducing a new reorganisation procedure, allowing creditors to vote on the reorganisation plan and granting debtors the possibility of obtaining post-commencement finance,” said Dr Sibanda.

He said the remarkable pace of reform was highlighted by the fact that in 2015 when the process started, led by the Office of the President and Cabinet, Zimbabwe ranked 171 out of 190 countries. The Chief Secretary noted there is “great opportunity” to improve further as a number of the key pieces of legislation that lay the foundation for Doing Business reforms such as Movable Property Security Interest Act, the Insolvency Act and the Companies and Other Business Entities Act have already been enacted and need to be implemented.