Harare investment policy key to revival
HARARE City Council’s proposed investment policy aimed at making the city an attractive investment destination dovetails with Government’s ongoing reforms to improve the Ease of Doing Business, simply because so much business regulation is done at local authority level.
The Office of the President and Cabinet last year embarked on a programme to expedite the business reforms through the Rapid Results Initiative being undertaken in phased 100 day periods and part of this process was using Harare City Council as the guinea pig to initiate reforms at this level and then, when systems were in place, roll out the reforms to the rest of the country.
Harare was an obvious choice for the testing process because it is the capital, so Government and council experts could work closely together to slice through 120 years of municipal regulations, BSA Company edicts, colonial legislative efforts and modern and often revolutionary changes.
Gains already registered show a decrease in the time needed to complete the paperwork by up to three quarters in some areas, simply by concentrating on what is important in the second decade of the 21st century, ensuring that investors can meet these important criteria, and having far fewer offices that a potential investor has to visit to satisfy the overhauled requirements.
Another good reason for choosing Harare is the complexity of the city and the different interests. For example most people in Harare want more industry and so more jobs and more wealth created. But few want a new factory too close to their home, or at least a new factory producing pollution. Already this is being sorted out.
A second cement plant has been built, far closer to housing than the first one built more than half a century ago on what was then the countryside. Yet sensible regulation has ensured the new plant starts with all the environmental protection needed and does not require expensive upgrades as the city expands.
Whole new industries have been created in the last few years. One example is the dramatic laying of a vast network of optic-fibre cable. We do not know how long it took to come up with a policy, but the present policy of ensuring the new utility is safe, that verges and roads are restored to original condition, that disruption in the laying process is minimal and that everything is clearly marked on plans in the possession of the municipal offices is an obvious template for any similar utility work.
To a large extent, a Harare industrial policy is codifying the changes made with Government help and locking in the gains, along with a procedure to make future changes simpler and easier.
This basically implies making rules simple and rational and the fewer the better; we need rules, but they need to answer our needs and concerns, not those of 1890, 1950 or even 1980.
The process of checking whether development meets these rules needs to be as swift as possible, while being thorough, and going through as few municipal offices as possible. This is simply continuing a process that has already made huge gains.
A city investment policy, like a government investment policy, is not so much working out how cities and the government should invest. They need to provide a fair amount of infrastructure, but this can be paid for from the rates and taxes of new productive investment.
The main job of the authorities is to make doing business easy, so new businesses can be formed, new jobs created. But at the same time ensuring that the new businesses build structures that fit in and will not fall down, that labour laws, however streamlined, are followed, that the new business is not a health hazard or damage the environment.
All this can be done, and done in a way that encourages investment, so long as national and local authorities are clear-sighted, able to identify the critical areas, able to respond to various demands and are continuing to look for ways to ensure the dross of 120 years of piecemeal regulation is cut away from the essentials that must remain.