Start-up need more support

EDITOR — As much as Government seems keen to remove obstacles to economic revival and foreign direct investment in the country, what happens to us children of the soil? Where is our piece of the cake, which we see being distributed to children coming from abroad?

Some of us want to till the land, some are desirous of the treasures buried in the ground, while some want to take care of visitors and quite a number want to process raw materials into finished products.

These crafts appear difficult to commence and sustain due to high legal fees for opening businesses, exorbitant licence fees from municipalities and other Government departments, unsustainable utility charges from service providers, the absence of land, commercial and industrial accommodation, ridiculous rental charges and “rampaging” Zimra, which appears to me and others to have a very narrow mandate — “collect any revenue by all means necessary to meet and exceed revenue targets.”

They are not aware that revenue collection is subject to economic performance, which in turn affects corporate performance.

Zimra should actually be at the forefront of promoting business operations, investing in SMEs through smart technologies, negotiating with banks on behalf of small companies the need to reduce bank charges and allowing banks to recover tax revenue with express consent of clients, because they would have been assisted to grow.

You can only harvest where you have sowed; knocking on someone’s door looking for money when you struggled just to register the company is not only insensitive but can easily encroach on to the realm of criminality. Matsimba