Business Reporter
Zimbabwean businesses must adopt a proactive and holistic approach to legal compliance to avoid being caught off guard by the swift implementation of new statutes and regulations, corporate and commercial lawyer Nellie Tiyago has warned.
With the year-end approaching and a new Finance Act expected, Ms Tiyago told the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) Strategic Intelligence Forum this morning that the business community could no longer afford to treat legal and regulatory changes as isolated events.
“The honest answer is that businesses need to prepare on several fronts at one time, simultaneously,” Ms Tiyago told delegates. “Over the past 12 months we’ve seen material changes in the tax system, to the rules governing currency, foreign exchange, to the rules of foreign ownership, corporate registration, and to the enforcement of data protection and competition laws.”
She noted that the cumulative effect of these changes meant “very few businesses are untouched and that a business in one sector can be affected by change aimed at another.”
From a corporate and commercial standpoint, Ms Tiyago said each development raised three critical practical questions for companies: what it required the company to do, what it did to existing contracts and transactions, and what must be brought into new ones.
Using the recently gazetted Finance Act No. 7 of 2025 as an illustration, she highlighted the lag between budget announcements and the final law. The Act, which gives legal force to the 2026 National Budget, received presidential assent on 29 December 2025, but its measures took effect on 1 January 2026.
“How many of you noted that not everything that was said in the budget then appeared in the finance act? And this is important to note,” she said. “So sometimes when budgets are given, take note, be prepared, but always wait for the final statute or regulation that comes following that.”
Ms Tiyago said the changes demanded that companies prepare simultaneously on several fronts, including tax, currency and foreign exchange, foreign ownership, corporate registration, data protection and competition law.
