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Rumbidzayi Zinyuke Manicaland Bureau
Government intends to register at least 15 000 new taxpayers by April this year as it moves towards formalising small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in line with Government’s 100-day action plan.

Speaking at an SMEs formalisation workshop held in Mutare on Tuesday, the deputy director in the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Enterprise Development, Mr Kupukani Masunungure, said his ministry has been working with the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) to educate SMEs on the importance of registering their bus- inesses.

“Government is aware of the high levels of informalisation in the country and this is unsustainable for the development of the economy,” he said. “We are, therefore, targeting to register 15 000 new taxpayers from this sector.”

Last year, Zimra embarked on a drive to educate informal traders on taxation issues as a way of growing the revenue base.

Mr Masunungure said since the launch of the workshops, 13 000 new taxpayers had been registered across the country last year.

“Although the numbers were bigger in Harare and Bulawayo, we had quite a number of registrations from other provinces,” he said. “Manicaland had about 900 new taxpayers.”

Mr Masunungure said formalisation presented a lot of opportunities to small businesses, including access to finance and markets.

He said most small businesses had been failing to meet requirements for accessing cheap money because they were not registered.

According to a 2012 Finscope Survey, Zimbabwe has about 2,8 million small businesses, more than 70 percent of which are not operating formally.