World Bank urges Zimbabwe to revamp business environment

Zimbabwe's business environment needs to be urgently revamped to attract much needed foreign investment and improve its low raking on the World Bank Ease of Doing Business Index, the World Bank said Wednesday.

In 2014, Zimbabwe was ranked 170 out of 189 economies on the World Bank Doing Business Indicators, a negligible two places up from 172 in 2013 and 170 in 2012.

"Of concern has been the consecutive down fall of the country's ranking on the World Bank Doing Business Indicators. This does indicate that the cost, time and procedures for doing business in Zimbabwe is high for locals and so deters even the foreign investors," the World Bank said.

In this regard, the World Bank said it will this Friday jointly hold a workshop with the Zimbabwe government, government agencies and private sector organizations to come up with an institutional framework for reforms to improve the business environment in Zimbabwe.

The workshop will be a follow-up to another one held in October last year after the Zimbabwe government requested for World Bank assistance on doing business reforms.

"It is anticipated that this Rollout Workshop would pave the way for actual reforms to be implemented in the short, medium and long term," the World Bank said.

It added that the reforms, once initiated, would generate momentum for further reforms and improvements to the country's Doing Business environment and overall investment climate.

Zimbabwe's poor investment climate has seen foreign direct investment declining significantly in recent years, amounting to 300.6 million U.S. dollars last year from 373.1 million dollars in 2013. Endi