Provincial Development Coordinator for Harare Metropolitan Province, Mr Tafadzwa Muguti says government will soon formalize Small To Medium Enterprises businesses which are currently operating as informal sector.
Mr Muguti said this in Harare yesterday where Afrosoft and Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce were signing a memorandum of understanding of a smart business hub which was a project of Afrosoft meant to be used by Small To Medium Enterprises to do payments, services and everything that concerns business online.
Mr Muguti who is also the group CEO of Africapaciti Investment Group in South Africa emphasized that the government was working on a programme which was meant to formalize the informal sector by ensuring that the informal business sector is granted affordable business rates and licenses.
“Government wish to ensure that soon we are going to be rolling out a programme where we want to formalize SME’s and we are calling it regularization through formalization where we are basically going to ensure that there are affordable rates for SME’s to be formalized hence an SME should not be paying the same business license as compared to a supermarket,” he said.
The Zimbabwean businessman insisted that government was going to transform the informal sector adding that the move was going to create a positive environment for informal sector to improve and become big business corporations.
“The industrial revolution can only be achieved by the guiding principles of SME’s development, we need to ensure that SMEs does not remain SMEs forever. The big supermarket chains we see today in whatever corner in the country were once a tuck shop but it was a conducive business climate which allowed them to become big conglomerates that they are today.” said Muguti.
Meanwhile, Institute Of People Management of Zimbabwe Executive Director Mrs Fortunate Sekeso added that informal sectors contributed a lot in the growth of the Zimbabwean economy insisting that the growth of SME’s will ensure that all Zimbabweans poor or rich will benefit.
“Let me say SME’s play a very pivotal role in the growth of the Zimbabwean economy whereby leading to the achievement of our vision 2030 and also in uplifting the livelihoods of marginalized families hence we appreciate this gesture by the Chamber of Commerce,” she said.
Furthermore, Chief Executive Officer at Afrosoft corporation, Mr John Mberi also reiterated that the memorandum of understanding was mainly focused on business entities and he emphasised that the implementation of the smart business hub will ensure a smooth flow of doing business as well as alleviating payment methods for small to medium enterprises sector in this period where the country is suffering from the Covid-19 lockdowns.
“This event is an event between businesses as represented by the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce and it is also an enabler of business which is a software development called Afrosoft hence what they have developed is an afro business platform which will enable a smooth flow of business which will ensure that all business services, payments and everything else that concerns business is going to be done online,” he said.
