Zim promises to address trade impediments
Keto Segwai | Monday February 19, 2024 06:00
The Botswana Trade and Investment Centre (BITC) and ZimTrade had jointly organised a business forum on the sidelines of the week-long fourth session of the Botswana/Zimbabwe Bi-National Commission (BNC) held in Maun recently. At that forum, Kgafela had implored the business forum participants “to interact, exchange and share ideas openly, identify any bottlenecks that are impediments to trade and highlight that to both BITC and ZimTrade to ensure that they are taken through the right channels to ease doing business on both countries.” The one-day business forum was also attended by Zimbabwe’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Frederick Shava. The CEOs of BITC, Kelothusitse Olebile and Allan Majura of ZimTrade, senior officials of the Botswana Unified Revenue Service (BURS)’s Lempheditse Odumetse and Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA)’s Bekezela Majokojoko, as well as Botswana and Zimbabwe businesspeople.
The director of a Maun-based boat manufacturing company, Aliboats, Rod Bateman brought to the attention of the authorities the near-impossible compliance requirement under a newly-introduced Zimbabwean regulation governing the entry of trailers into that country. Under the new law, exporters into Zimbabwe need to have a trailer verification certificate issued by Bureau Veritas - a testing and inspection company. Bateman explained that his frustration stems from the fact that Bureau Veritas does not have an office in Botswana and had told him that they have no intention of opening one any time soon. Even more frustrating for the Maun boat builder is that the company recently got its first bulk order of 26 boats from an exclusive agent in Zimbabwe. And the company has recently expanded its Maun workshop to accommodate that order. The Zimbabwean market is an important one for Aliboats, which sells boats all over Africa and far-afield. Bateman noted that his company has tried unsuccessfully for many years to enter the Zimbabwean market, which then had a vibrant world-class fibre-glass boat manufacturing sector. Aliboats specialises in aluminium boats.
However, three years ago Aliboats got its first break into the Zimbabwean market and has since sold about 30 boats. But now the new trailer verification certificate requirement is threatening to torpedo that trade as boats have to be physically transported by the company custom-designed trailers to the destination market. ZimTrade chief executive officer, Majura confessed that he had only heard of the trailer certification requirement at the meeting and promised to attend to the problem as soon as possible. Majura similarly promised to expeditiously address concerns raised by a Kasane-based tour operator, Green Safaris. The company’s director, Mist Setaung explained that Green Safaris plies its trade in the Chobe/Zambezi confluence hub that services four countries’ borders – Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Setaung told the forum that Green Safaris has encountered many operational problems, specifically on the Zimbabwean border. He lamented that the insistence by the Zimbabwe border authorities on the use of the American currency, the US dollar, is proving to be very expensive. Though the border authorities accept regional currencies such as Pula and Rand, the entry charges are exclusively based on US$. He maintained that that distorts the actual value of the services offered. The unintended effect is that paying for similar services is way out of this world in Zimbabwe in comparison with the neighbouring countries of Botswana, Namibia and Zambia. As later explained to this publication, Setaung opines that Zimbabwe can benchmark their pricing with the three neighbouring countries and allow travellers to pay with any of the three currencies (Pula, Namibian Dollar/Rand, and Zambian Kwacha) since all these are stable currencies. He also told the forum that the Zimbabwean immigration and customs authorities prefer cash payment without an option to use credit cards, which greatly inconveniences Green Safaris’ clients, who are mainly overseas tourists. The travellers are also inconvenienced by the slow processing of visas, which is still done manually. Setaung disclosed that often it takes an hour or more to process about 10 travellers. There had been an instance in the recent past where a client collapsed after waiting for more than two hours. SADC citizens are exempted from the visa requirement.
Meanwhile, businesspeople have been encouraged to take advantage of the Botswana/Zimbabwe bilateral trade agreement, under which goods and services are exempted from customs duties provided they meet a minimum requirement of 25% local content or they have the SADC Certificate of Country of Origin. Other advantages include access to the Double-Taxation Avoidance Treaty of 2008. Potential exporters are, however, required to register with BURS and ZIMRA in order to benefit from the bilateral trade agreement. BURS’ representative at the business forum, Gone L. Arieff noted that a paltry 26 traders are registered under the Botswana/Zimbabwe trade agreement and 160 under the SADC Free Trade agreement. She explained that the registration has benefits that include lower tariffs and tax exceptions. “There is a chunk of trade opportunities that need to be explored under the Botswana/Zimbabwe bilateral trade agreement,” she said. For his part, Majokojoko of ZIMRA noted that only 368 traders are registered in Zimbabwe for Botswana exports. For easy of doing business, both BURS and ZIMRA provide on-line platforms where exporters can conclude the necessary pre-clearance processes before leaving for the borders.