Few Bulawayo business leaders attend Companies Bill input meeting

Natasha Chamba, Business Reporter
BUSINESS leaders in Bulawayo yesterday squandered an opportunity to contribute their input into the Companies and Other Businesses Entities Bill as only a handful of them and a group of journalists attended the public consultative meeting on the proposed law at a city hotel.

The Bill seeks to repeal the current Companies Act [Chapter 24:03] as well as the Private Business Corporation Act [Chapter 24:11]. The event was scheduled to begin at 9 AM but was delayed because of poor attendance.

Members of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs had arrived at the venue by 9AM and the few business representatives only managed to get in 20 minutes later. Among those who attended was Professional Businesses’ Association of Zimbabwe (Probaz) president Dr Lucky Mlilo and one of his members, an official from PPC Zimbabwe Limited and ordinary people.

No concrete submissions were made as the business representatives present claimed they had not read the Bill and needed to go through it first before they could contribute.

“Honourables, I am kindly asking for time to go through the Bill so that I and the organisation that I represent can contribute constructively. We will send our contributions by the end of next week in writing,” Dr Mlilo said.

The PPC representative also said he could not contribute: “I cannot say anything of benefit because I have not yet gone through the document and am kindly asking for time to do so”.

Journalists who attended took the opportunity to asked the committee to explain how long it should take to register a business so as to foster the ease of doing business for both the locals and foreign investors.

In response, Committee chairperson Mr Misheck Mataranyika of Makoni South Constituency said elsewhere the public consultations held across the country had people stressing the need for business entities’ incorporation agencies to be limited to a specific group of people.

“The main issue we have gathered is that people want business entities incorporation agencies to be limited to a specific group of people, unlike before when anyone could go around registering companies,” he said.

“People have also spoken about the responsibilities of directors. In other words they are talking about corporate governance.”

Mr Mataranyika said the Bill was driven by a modernisation agenda, which seeks to maintain order in the corporate sector and ride on corporate governance principles that have developed in the last 40 years. – @queentauruszw.