Online Reporter
Ivan Zhakata
Herald Correspondent
THE Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZimStat), in partnership with the National Competitiveness Commission (NCC), has launched a National Competitiveness Baseline Survey aimed at generating data to strengthen the country’s economic performance and ease of doing business.
The survey, which will run from May 14 to June 15, 2026, seeks to establish a comprehensive baseline on Zimbabwe’s competitiveness across key sectors and guide policy interventions under the National Development Strategy 2 (NDS2).
Speaking on behalf of ZimStat director-general Mrs Tafadzwa Bandama, the director of Production Statistics Ms Matiwonesa Phiri said the exercise was key to achieving Zimbabwe’s Vision 2030 of attaining upper middle-income status.
“Zimbabwe has set itself an ambitious but achievable goal under NDS2 to accelerate economic growth, enhance productivity and improve the country’s global competitiveness,” she said.
Ms Phiri said the survey would identify constraints affecting productivity, cost structures and the ease of doing business, while generating evidence to support targeted policy interventions.
“It is aimed at establishing a comprehensive baseline on Zimbabwe’s competitiveness across key sectors and providing a framework for tracking progress over time,” she said.
She urged captains of industry to cooperate with enumerators and provide accurate and timely information, saying the success of the exercise hinged on stakeholder participation.
“As primary producers of economic activity, you hold invaluable insights into the operational realities, challenges and opportunities within the business environment,” said Ms Phiri.
She assured stakeholders that all information collected would be treated with strict confidentiality in line with the Census and Statistics Act and would be published in aggregate form.
NCC director Mr Brighton Shayanewako said the survey marked a shift towards developing domesticated competitiveness indicators tailored to Zimbabwe’s economic realities.
“This survey is designed to generate credible, nationally representative statistics that reflect the realities of doing business in Zimbabwe across all sectors of the economy,” he said.
Mr Shayanewako said the data would feed into a national competitiveness indicators database to support evidence-based policymaking and reforms.
He said while international indices have provided useful insights, they often fail to capture sector-specific constraints unique to Zimbabwe.
“The absence of a comprehensive, domesticated and up-to-date competitiveness indicators database has been a major gap, which this survey seeks to address,” Mr Shayanewako said.
He said the findings would assist Government in monitoring and evaluating the country’s competitiveness trajectory in line with NDS2 and Vision 2030, while also enabling benchmarking, trend analysis and identification of bottlenecks affecting the ease of doing business.
“The quality and reliability of the data will depend on the cooperation of stakeholders, whose participation is indispensable to the success of the survey,” Mr Shayanewako said.
