admin
Dumisani Nsingo Senior Business Reporter
THE Government will soon operationalise a One Stop Investment Centre in a bid to attract the much needed foreign investment and expedite the process of registering offshore companies to conduct business in the country, a Cabinet Minister said. The country launched the One Stop shop in 2010, with focus not only on boosting foreign direct investment, but to also improve the ease of doing business in the country, for instance registration and acquisition of necessary documentation or licences.
However, it has not been operating efficiently since its launch.
Speaking at a business conference organised by the Affirmative Action Group in Bulawayo on Friday Economic Planning and Investment Promotion Minister Ambassador Simon Khaya Moyo said his Ministry was working on various initiatives aimed at attracting foreign investors into the country.
“We shall be going out, the entire world to entice investors.
“We are working on coming up with little investment handbooks which we will be going around with showing what Zimbabwe has to offer as a country. We are working flat out on that and I have told my staff we want it done by yesterday,” Minister Khaya Moyo said.
He said plans of enacting a One Stop Investment Centre were at an advanced stage stating that its aim was to reduce the time and bureaucracy that an investor goes through when planning to invest in the country.
It was taking about 96 days to process a potential investor’s business application, but Government sought to reduce it to five days after implementing the One Stop shop concept.
“We are setting up the One Stop Investment Centre soon. We are putting staff together. We don’t want would be investors coming into Zimbabwe to spend two to five months staying in hotels, moving from office to office, ministry to ministry, from pillar to post without really getting what they came for.
“This One Stop Investment Centre means you can have all your queries done in one place and instead of spending all that time you spend two to three days and you are done and you start your business. So we don’t want people to be kept here until there are frustrated,” Minister Khaya Moyo said.
He said the One Stop Investment Centre was also aimed at promoting domestic investment through facilitating partnerships and joint ventures between foreign and domestic investors or between locals.
He said the country received Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) worth $400 million and $545 million in 2013 and 2014 respectively, which were meagre figures in relation to the funding requirements of Zim-Asset.
“The Ministry is therefore gripped with the creation of conducive environment for FDI inflows. Initiatives to this end include designing incentives for foreign investors, reforming the One Stop Investment Centre and reviewing current labour and indigenisation laws to attract foreign investment,” Minister Khaya Moyo said.
An international acclaimed expert in transformation leadership and investor relations, Mr Zwelibanzi Ndlovu of Stop to Start International Private Limited said it was of paramount importance for Zimbabwe to come up with a One Stop Investment Centre so as to create an enabling environment for foreign investors to bring in the much needed investment capital.
The much travelled Mr Ndlovu had an opportunity to witness the setting up of a One Stop Investment Centre in Rwanda while doing his consultancy in East Africa.
“What countries like Rwanda did was to map out this process and bring the responsible desks from each of those government departments and ministries into one office, with all the power and all stamps, with computer equipment that is networked straight to the mother ministry.
“So that when the investors walk in, they must be able to move from one desk to the next and in less than two hours they should actually have their business registered and that’s all what a One Stop Investment Centre is all about,” Mr Ndlovu said.
Bongani Ndlovu
Online Reporter