OPC mobilises $100m to reduce budget deficit

THE Government will mobilise $100 million from the local market to reduce the budget deficit as part of various initiatives that are expected to stimulate the country’s ongoing Ease of Doing Business reforms, the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) has said.

The Ease of Doing Business reform is a Government-wide and multi-stakeholder initiative embarked on in September 2015 driven by the OPC, as directed by President Mugabe in his 10-Point Economic Plan presented in the State of the Nation Address in August 2015 within the context of implementing ZimAsset.

The programme focuses primarily on improving the business environment for Zimbabwean entrepreneurs as well as laying the foundation to attract sustainable and mutually beneficial Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in addition to improving performance of the public sector institutions in delivering quality services to the people and reducing the cost of doing business.

Government has embraced the Rapid Results Initiative (RRI) in the Ease of Doing Business as a way of fast tracking results in the various Technical Working Groups (TWGs). A number of legislative and administrative milestones have been achieved in the five (TWGs), namely Starting a Business and Protecting Minority Investors; Enforcing Contracts and Resolving Insolvency; Getting Credit; Paying Taxes and Trading Across Borders; and Construction Permits and Registering Property.

“The enabler clusters are concentrating on cross cutting issues, which include mobilising $100 million from the local market to reduce the budget deficit; improving revenue collections to 10 percent above target; improving transparency and accountability of revenue and expenditure; establish an Aid Coordination Unit ; resuscitating destination marketing representation in line with the Look East Policy; establishing mechanisms for coherent communication on Government implementation of programmes and projects; developing robust monitoring and evaluation guidelines; creating a recognisable brand for Zimbabwe ; producing a Draft National Vision 2040; the enactment of the Public Entities Corporate Governance Bill ; and the launch of nine e-Government flagship projects,” said the OPC in a statement.

“Significant progress has been made in the sphere of legislative reforms, with the drafting of the following Acts, which are currently at various stages of approval by Parliament; Deeds Registry Act; Judicial Laws Ease of Settling Commercial Disputes Bill: Shop Licensing Act; Insolvency Act; Movable Property Security Interest Bill; Estate Administrators and Insolvency Practitioners Act; Companies Act; Regional Town and Country Planning Act; and the Public Procurement Act. Administrative milestones include streamlining the building plan approval process, introducing an official website containing information on registering property, promulgation of the Credit Registry, and implementation of the online company name search application system,” the OPC added.

The OPC said focus is now on implementing the identified Ease of Doing Business reform key interventions namely; full operationalisation of a Credit Registry; the Commercial Courts and the Collateral Registry; enactment of the Movable Property Security Interest Law and the Judicial Laws; Settling Commercial and Other Disputes Bill; enactment of Companies Act Amendment Bill; Insolvency Bill the Estate Administrators Act Amendment Bill and the Shop Licensing Act Amendment Bill.

“It is believed that once these issues are fully dealt with, there are opportunities for very significant improvement of Zimbabwe’s Doing Business, which marginally moved in the positive form 161 to 159 on the World Bank’s 2018 global ranking. To ensure success of all these reforms, Government has also undertaken a Sector- by-Sector Approach to Ease of Doing Business in order to comprehensively address the most urgent issues affecting the investment and business operating environment in key sectors of the economy comprising; Local Authorities, Tourism, transport, mining and trade facilitation, among others. Key enablers such as National Branding and communication are also being pursued,” the OPC added.