World bank doing business report zimbabwe africa

After two decades of negative per capita growth, GDP growth has averaged 5 percent per year and GDP per capita has increased by 30 percent since Yet important competitiveness challenges remain—as explored in Chapter 1. African countries would benefit from more intense trade and investment linkages, including higher intra-regional trade.

The ZIA reports that approval of investment applications now takes 5 days, down from the 49 days it took inthanks to implementation of a "one-stop shop" concept to coordinate the work of officials from the ZIA and other government agencies.

All private firms are required to incorporate and register with the Registrar of Companies within the framework of their investment certificate or exchange-control approval. Foreign investment in existing companies requires approval from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe RBZas the central bank is known.

Applications are submitted to the RBZ's Exchange Control Department through the investor's commercial bank or merchant bank or other authorized foreign-exchange dealer.

Foreign investors with valid investment certificates may acquire real estate. In the mids, the government identified privatization of state-owned enterprises as a priority, but only two have been successfully privatized since then.

Although the government set up a ministry responsible for state-owned enterprises, this ministry still lacks the authority to set and implement privatization policy. Lack of political will, the enterprises' operational inefficiencies, and weak balance sheets make it unlikely that privatization will accelerate in the near term.

As Zimbabwe's relations with the U. Under this "Look East" policy, some Asian investors have been offered access to reserved sectors, sometimes at the expense of local or established foreign investors.

Despite the official emphasis placed on these ties and a few high-profile project announcements, Asian investment is still a small fraction of existing investment from South Africa and the United Kingdom.

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Conversion and Transfer Policies Until the end ofZimbabwe's exchange-rate policies made it difficult for firms to obtain foreign currency, and this in turn resulted in shortages of fuel, electric power, and other imported goods.

Other consequences included defaults on public- and private-sector debt and a sharp decline in industrial, agricultural, and mining operations.

Inthe government lifted exchange controls and withdrew the Zimbabwe dollar from circulation. Foreign currencies are now used for all transactions in Zimbabwe, with most business being conducted in U.

Zimbabwe's export performance is recovering slowly, and the government's debt arrears block access to multilateral financing. These conditions severely constrain external financing for the economy.

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The RBZ has not restored foreign-currency accounts it confiscated from banks' depositors prior to official dollarization in With these changes, exporters now retain percent of their foreign-currency receipts for their own use.

Expropriation and Compensation Despite previous provisions in Zimbabwe's constitution that prohibit the acquisition of private property without compensation, in the government sanctioned uncompensated seizures of privately owned agricultural land.

Many of the farms seized were subsequently transferred to government officials and other regime supporters. The government in April amended the constitution to authorize the compulsory acquisition of privately owned commercial farms with compensation limited to the improvements made on the land.

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In Septemberthe government amended the constitution again to transfer ownership of all expropriated land to the government. Since the passage of this amendment, top government officials, supporters of President Mugabe's ZANU-PF party and members of the security forces have continued to disrupt production on commercial farms, including those owned by foreign investors and covered by bilateral investment agreements.

Inthe government began to issue year leases for land seized from commercial farms. These leases, however, are not readily transferable. The government retains the right to withdraw the lease at any time. The government's program to seize commercial farms without compensating the titleholders, who have no recourse to the courts, has raised serious questions about respect for property rights and the rule of law in Zimbabwe.The Doing Business in South Africa report, the second in the sub-national series on South Africa, analyses business regulations for domestic small and medium enterprises in nine major cities.

Doing Business presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across economies—from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe—over time.

This report presents a summary of Doing Business indicators for the East African Community. The ease of doing business index is an index created by Simeon Djankov at the World Bank initiativeblog.com academic research for the report was done jointly with professors Oliver Hart and Andrei Shleifer.

Higher rankings (a low numerical value) indicate better, usually simpler, regulations for businesses and stronger protections of property rights. The World Bank Doing Business report has ranked Sierra Leone out of economies, with () and () in ease of Doing Business.

The report, which was released yesterday by the World Bank’s headquarters in Washington, recorded two reforms undertaken by Sierra in with zero reform for Africa Competitiveness Report According to the World Bank Doing Business indicators, it takes 51 days and requires seven documents to export a container from Zambia, The Africa Competitiveness Report (World Economic Forum et al.

). 2. World Bank Economic Review, 22(3) –, ; cited in Karlan D. and Morduch J., Access to Finance, Ch. 71, in “Handbook of Development Economics”, vol.