Deal with bottlenecks, red tape

Albert Norumedzo In the Money
Bureaucracies and self-defeating hierarchies have been the uncontested cause of strategy and policy implementation failure in many organisations or progressive undertakings.

An idea is conceived, evaluated, deliberated upon and adopted as strategy with the hope of it bearing fruit and transforming lives when implemented.

However, more often than not there are hurdles to the implementation process of the adopted strategy.

In Zimbabwe’s case the major obstacle to implementation has often been bureaucracy and system structural bottle necks.

Crucial economic policy and projects have remained confronted by system bottlenecks, stifling bureaucracy, lack of co-operation between authorities and regulatory bodies as well as corruption and lack of accountability and ownership of activities.

Zimbabwe is ranked 171 out of 189 countries on the World Bank 2015 Doing Business Rankings while countries competing for the same capital investment as Zimbabwe are ranked higher.

Mozambique is ranked 127, Malawi 164, Zambia 111, Namibia 88, Botswana 74 and South Africa 43. This explains why out of the $80 billion in FDI attracted by Africa, Zimbabwe’s share was a paltry $400 million, less than 1 percent, while Mozambique attracted $8 billion, 10 percent.

What remains ironic is that Zimbabwe is not at war and its politics is not unique to Zimbabwe alone.

In fact, Zimbabwe is ranked among the most peaceful countries in Africa. Its financial and physical infrastructure is in better shape than most African countries and yet we still struggle to secure tangible significant economic interest from global investors.

It does not demand a lot of inquest into the economic and socio-political landscape to see that system structural bottlenecks are weighing the country down.

The current economic strategic policy thrust requires approximately $27 billion to implement and we attracted less than 1,7 percent of that requirement in the last year, at current levels of FDI flows Zim-Asset will require a time frame of approximately five decades (half a century) for it to be fully funded.

The process flow that an entrepreneur has to go through in pursuit of establishing a business in Zimbabwe is in itself a paralysis to the cause.

The average time from registration to operational status involves on average nine procedures and eight regulatory bodies compared to sub-Saharan Africa with an average of six procedures at most and on average four regulatory authorities.

In Zimbabwe it takes approximately 90 days to finish the registration and establishment process while it takes only 27 days across other sub-Saharan countries, the cost to GDP per capita for the process is 114 percent compared to only 50 percent in SSA. The establishment of a one-stop investment centre to ease the process of setting up operations in Zimbabwe was a welcome development.

The one-stop investment centre is aimed at smoothing the process of setting up operations in Zimbabwe, from company registration, empowerment law compliance checks, immigration permits, taxation and customs clearance issues.

It is also meant to address other business issues such as access to office space, access to utilities such as water, electricity and telecommunication facilities and any other requirements of investors.

It is meant to facilitate investment, streamline and simplify business set-up processes, so as to cut on the time and costs associated with doing business in Zimbabwe, said the Zimbabwe Investment Authority.

But as is the norm the centre is still not yet fully operational due to nothing else but system structural bottlenecks.

The lack of clearly defined policies, procedures and process flows to handling and regulating foreign investments has fuelled the growth of corruption, nepotism, sabotage, confusion and inefficient allocation of resources.

Amendments to the empowerment laws to address key questions and obstacles to the much needed FDI is a notion making the rounds in economic and political circles, reports of committees that have been set up to structure enabling and harmonised empowerment laws have been made numerous times in both political and economic circles with most stakeholders upholding the conclusion that a one size fits all approach is not feasible.

Surprisingly, the investing community still awaits a publicly circulated and adopted revised policy that addresses this concern.

Labour laws have often been labelled by analysts as a stumbling block to industry’s ability to restructure and survive the changing environment and proposals to assess the need for labour market reforms but up to now nothing has materialised, as usual strategy remains confined to boardroom discussions and proposals.

Like many other propositions that have been tabled for discussion, deliberated upon and passed for adoption but failed to materialise beyond the blueprint such is the fate of many of Zimbabwe’s policies.

Globalisation has opened up the competitive landscape by eliminating geographic boundaries, businesses and countries compete at a global scale for capital, markets and resources, failure to adopt a proactive approach towards enhancing international competitiveness will lead to a massive competitive disadvantage and under development.

Other countries have quickly embraced the importance of an open economy that subscribes to the capital mobility requirement of investment and as such have been able to attract meaningful capital flows.

Zimbabwe is awash with resource endowment, encompassing a wide spectrum of opportunities from mining, infrastructure and manufacturing to agriculture, the potential is massive for a country that was once termed the breadbasket of Africa despite its small size.

Globally, commendable human capital, financial infrastructure and the use of the multi-currency regime are significant investment pull factors that would be a massive competitive edge in capable hands but due to system-wide structural bottle- necks their full potential will forever remain a pipedream that never sees materialisation.