Govt abolishes minimum capital requirement
Govt abolishes minimum capital requirementBy Mutale Kapekele
Fri 14 May 2010, 04:00 CAT
THE government has abolished with immediate effect the minimum capital requirement to start a business as part of the ongoing legislative changes aimed at reducing the cost of doing business.
This means that greenfield businesses do not have to show proof that they have the capital to venture in a business before registration. Announcing the development in Lusaka yesterday, commerce minister Felix Mutati said 170 of the 517 business licences will be eliminated.
Mutati also announced that 57 licences would be reclassified and 99 amalgamated into 21 as part of the reforms.
“Currently, the licences we have are too many and the requirements to get them are cumbersome, time-consuming and do not assist businesses to go ahead,” Mutati said.
“Some of them are as old as 1935 and we took a decision to eliminate all the unnecessary licences and so far 23 have already been eliminated, one has been reclassified, and 40 Bills have been drafted to incorporate business licensing reform recommendations.”
He said the licensing reforms were just a beginning of programmes aimed at reducing the cost of business which he said was increased by K2 trillion per year as a result of licensing and time wasted in trying to acquire them.
“We don’t want people to spend too much time in corridors pushing for licences that are a burden; that robs them of time that they could use for economic activities,” Mutati said.
He also announced that a team from the World Bank would at the end of this month tour Zambia to assess its business environment.
Mutati hoped that at the end of the World Bank ‘inspection,’ the country would rank better than the 90 slot it currently occupies on the bank’s doing business ladder.
Labels: BUSINESS, ENTREPRENEURS, FELIX MUTATI, LICENSES, SMEs
posted by MrK @ 4:10 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home