(ZIMBABWE GUARDIAN) Firms should comply or face the law: Kasukuwere

Monday, April 12, 2010

(ZIMBABWE GUARDIAN) Firms should comply or face the law: Kasukuwere

Firms should comply or face the law: Kasukuwere
By: TH-TZG
Posted: Monday, April 12, 2010 12:46 am

FOREIGN-OWNED firms operating in Zimbabwe should immediately comply with provisions of the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act or face the wrath of the law, Youth Development, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Minister Saviour Kasukuwere has warned.

Kasukuwere said this last Friday while addressing delegates attending a National Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Fund (NIEEF) strategic planning workshop in Kariba, a town in Mashonaland West province of Zimbabwe.

"I would like to urge eligible businesses to comply with the laws of the country and if there are any suggestions to make to Government, please let us discuss these in a frank and positive manner while going forward.

"I urge you to follow the law and not be persuaded otherwise because in case of breaching the provisions, the law will take its punitive course.

"Surely you will agree with me that compliance with the law in all jurisdictions is a major principle of good corporate governance the world over," Minister Kasukuwere said.

He said the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act stipulated that indigenous Zimbabweans were entitled to have 51 percent shareholding in all foreign-owned companies operating in the country whose threshold was US$500 000 within a period of five years.

"There is no going back on this programme and we are going to make sure we achieve our desired objectives of seeing our people countrywide empowered.

"Empowerment is an attitudinal issue. It is a mind game and we don’t have to fear anything because we are going to make it," he said.

The first phase of the indigenisation drive in the country is for all companies in the country to to provide an indigenisation implementation plan to the government by Thursday April 15.

NIEEF board chairman, David Chapfika, said the current indigenisation drive reflected the final stages of the liberation struggle after the land reform programme.

He said: "This NIEEF has been mandated by the Minister to ensure and implement the Act. We are looking at making sure that we indigenise the economy based on sectors specific and we are going to make sure that implementation of this Act is done professionally.

"We want to make sure that we stimulate growth of the economy and we are going to be a professionally run organisation and we want to make sure we achieve the desired objectives of the five year strategic plan," Mr Chapfika said.

He said his board was mobilising funds for indigenous Zimbabweans who would need capital assistance, adding that efforts were being made to ensure that not only a few elites benefit from the programme.

Affirmative Action Group secretary general Mr Tafadzwa Musarara said: "In the implementation of this law, there must be listing of conglomerates who have for too long shunned the ZSE because they did not want to share the stake with indigenous Zimbabweans.

"There should also be a mechanism of prosecuting those foreigners who want to put Zimbabweans as fronts. This is already a law and people should now focus on how they are going to implement the provisions of the law."

Zimbabwe Indigenous Economic Empowerment Organisation president Mr Paddington Japajapa, said they were going to request that Minister Kasukuwere invoke section 21 of the 3rd schedule of the Act, which provided for reserved sectors of the economy for indigenous Zimbabweans.

Labels: INDIGENIZATION AND EMPOWERMENT ACT (ZIMBABWE), SAVIOUR KASUKUWERE