Online Reporter
Fungi Kwaramba, National Editor
GOVERNMENT recently adopted two key policies to integrate the informal sector into the broader economy and remove the stigma of criminalisation, Presidential spokesperson Mr George Charamba has said.
This comes as Cabinet approved the National Formalisation Strategy and the National Employment Policy (2026-2030).
Both frameworks aim to formalise the informal sector and create sustainable employment, strengthening Zimbabwe’s socio-economic resilience.
The policies are designed to ensure the informal sector is recognised as an engine of value creation — a crucial step toward Vision 2030 and the goal of becoming an upper-middle-income economy.
In an interview, Mr Charamba said informality is not a disease to be hunted, but a feature that must be understood — and integrated.
“There is always this thinking that Zimbabwe is not doing too well because over 50 percent of its economy is in the informal sector. The informal sector is presented as a problem.”
Mr Charamba warned that such thinking is often rooted in an emotional, and therefore misleading response to how the economy works on the ground.
“Often times one really gets angry,” he said, before challenging the narrative that informality equals backwardness.
“Are we that behind in terms of understanding that informality is in fact an integral part of the economic arrangement in any jurisdiction” Mr Charamba said.
To make his point, he pointed beyond Zimbabwe’s borders—arguing that even “highly formalised” economies rely on informal activity.
“You go to the UK. It’s supposed to be a highly formalised economy… It was essentially informal,” he said, recalling how what people grew up calling “informal” is simply commerce outside a narrow definition of formality.
“Go to America. You will find informal sector. So, there is nothing inherently backward or criminal about informality.”
“What is backward is our inability to incorporate and integrate it within the broader economy,” Mr Charamba insisted.
He added that the existence of a so-called formal sector automatically implies the existence of an informal counterpart—and the policy question is how both can be brought into “articulation”.
“If you say there is a formal sector, then by implication, you are saying there is an informal sector. The question is, how do you get these two to articulate,” he said.
Mr Charamba welcomed Government’s recent policy direction, describing it as both modest in presentation and significant in substance.
“We have just announced a new policy where we are saying the informal sector is a legitimate player in this economy,” he said.
This approach, he suggested, aligns with economic reality rather than moral judgement. “from the point of view of economics, you are taught that yes, there is a normative branch of economics where you spell out the commandments, thou shalt not,” he said.
“Then there is also what we call the positive side of economics where you are saying every citizen is a rational economic player.”
Crucially, Mr Charamba argued that informality reflects entrepreneurial choice within constraints.
“So, if you have an informal sector in any economy, it means there is someone who has found a niche which they are exploiting to provide a service. So you can’t then criminalise it,” he said.
Yet legitimacy, he cautioned, does not mean abandoning the public purse. Government, he implied, must still create a taxation framework that fits how the informal economy operates.
“The key thing being that fiscally we must devise ways of taxing it” said Mr Charamba.
“And that we haven’t done so does not necessarily delegitimise the informal sector.”
As Zimbabwe grapples with industrial and resource-driven change—“around mining, around iron and steel, around our cotton”—the spokesman suggested informality is set to expand rather than shrink.
“I see that informal sector burgeoning,” Mr Charamba said, and urged that the state’s response should be policy integration, not criminalisation.
Ultimately, Mr Charamba framed the message as part of the wider national transformation under NDS-2, describing the direction as moving forward but we are also transforming.
That transformation, if executed with discipline and clarity, will determine whether informality becomes a permanent shadow economy—or a recognised engine of value creation plugged into national development.
