BUSINESS REPORTER
The Zimbabwe Investment Development Agency (ZIDA) is working to reduce the lead time in licensing investors to about four days on automation amid increased interest from foreign investors.
This comes as ZIDA has surpassed its US$1.5bn in foreign investment commitments in the first half of the year after raking in over US$1.7bn, according to CEO Tafadzwa Chinamo.
Foreign investors’ commitments were US$760m and US$1.075bn in the first and second quarter of the year, he said.
This comes as ZIDA is targeting committed investments of US$4bn this year. Of that, foreign direct investments are earmarked at US$1.5bn, domestic direct investments (US$500m) and reinvestments of US$2bn.
Last year, Zimbabwe had committed investments of US$2.4bn and actual recorded investment was US$2.3bn, according to ZIDA.
Never Nyemudzo, ZIDA’s chief facilitator, said the agency was working on reducing the lead time in licensing riding on automation which is doing away with the manual system.
“The lead time from the point of application to approval was 21 days. Now after automation, phase one will do away with these challenges [manual system] and the lead time is 7 days,” Nyemudzo said.
“Phase two which we are anticipating to launch at the beginning of next month is called do it yourself by launching a universal platform. An investor needs to go online, fill an application form, attach what is required and send papers. We anticipate that our lead time will further improve from 7 days to about 3 or 4 days.”
