admin
Patrick Chitumba Midlands Bureau Chief
THE government is harmonising 11 laws to facilitate the ease of doing business in the country, Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa said yesterday. Addressing members of the business community in Kwekwe during the commissioning of a $3,5 million Dendairy Long Life Milk factory, VP Mnangagwa said the government was prioritising laws that make it easy for investors to do business in the country.
The Vice President’s visit to Dendairy was part of his two-day tour of manufacturing industries in the Midlands province.
He said the laws were aimed at attracting investments into the country.
“We’ve an inter-ministerial committee which I head to facilitate the ease of doing business. We’ve assigned the Ministry of Industry and Commerce to engage players in that sector and make recommendations so that we make legislation that promotes the ease of doing business,” said the VP.
“We’ve so far moved about 18 ranks in the positive in the world rankings on the ease of doing business and so far we’ve 11 pieces of legislation that are pushing through parliament to change the way of doing business.”
VP Mnangagwa said plans were at an advanced stage to decentralise the registration of companies and the Deeds Office to enable potential business owners to register and operate if they meet requirements.
“In the past it would take 90 days to register a company and in some instances you could only do that in Harare and Bulawayo. Now we’ve decentralised that and we’re setting up offices in each and every town. We don’t want our investors and potential business people to go through long processes in setting up their businesses by engaging one Ministry after another. Now all this is now being done under one roof,” said the VP.
VP Mnangagwa also said it was important for the government to support and protect productive industries so that they remain viable and continue to grow.
He said the manufacturing sector needs the government’s protection from imports which he said threatened their viability.
“There is a need for the government to tighten screws on imports of products that are locally accessible to protect local industry,” the VP said.
“The government will give support to local industries particularly those that are productive and has opened lines of credit to assist ailing industries. We should find more and more of our domestic products in our retail shops and supermarkets and to do so we need to give priority in terms of support to these companies that manufacture products for our domestic consumption. We can’t continue importing products that can be found locally.”
He said the economy was on the right path and moving out of the doldrums.
Dendairy chief executive officer Daryl Coetzee said they had invested more than $10million into the Kwekwe dairy plant. He said the long life milk factory was part of the $10million project with room for potential growth.
“We’re now supplying 70 percent of the monthly dairy products needs in the country. With the new investment, we’re also able to produce five million litres of milk every month,” Coetzee said.
Online Reporter