Zimbabwe Cuts 291 Levies: Clearing the Path to a Productive, Value-Creating Economy
Zimbabwe’s government has fully removed or reduced 291 licences, permits, levies and fees across the economy — the cattle levy, the fishmonger’s licence, the fuel-storage certificate, the 25 permits it once took to open a supermarket. This is real reform, and it is the right direction. Every needless charge lifted is a brick removed from the wall between a Zimbabwean and the work of building — and this is how a nation clears the ground for industry, ownership and value to rise.
This is Entry 63 of the Economic Journal, and it is, for once, a piece that opens with praise — because credit is owed, and this platform gives it where it is due. The Government of Zimbabwe has done something genuinely useful: through its Ease of Doing Business “Mop-Up Review,” it has now fully implemented the removal or reduction of 291 licences, permits, levies and fees that for years made it slow, costly and maddening to run a business in this country. That is real reform, and it deserves to be reported as the good news it is before we ask the harder question underneath.
Here is what happened, plainly. After President Mnangagwa repeatedly called for the cost of doing business to be cut, Cabinet approved a review of licences and fees — first across 12 to 13 priority sectors (approved 29 July 2025), then extended to the residual sectors: agriculture, education, transport, sport and the natural-stone export subsector. Presenting the implementation report to Cabinet, Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion Minister Professor Mthuli Ncube confirmed the tally; Information Minister Dr Soda Zhemu announced it to the nation after the Cabinet meeting. The abolished charges read like a catalogue of everyday Zimbabwean frustration: the annual cattle levy, livestock movement clearance fees, the fishmonger’s licence, the fuel-storage registration certificate, carcass inspection fees, the timber-transport levy, the generator levy, borehole and water-abstraction costs. Small things, each one — but together, a heavy weight lifted off the backs of farmers, traders and small firms.
What 291 Cuts Actually Means
Numbers make a reform real, so let us set them down — and let us picture the weight each one lifts from an ordinary Zimbabwean trying to earn a living.
The 291 figure is real and welcome — but it is a milestone on a longer road, not the finish line. Ncube himself has said some reforms remain “outstanding” and not yet fully applied.
Who Actually Did This
A reform is announced by ministers, but it is built by many hands — the ones whose names rarely appear in the headline. This platform believes the Second Great Zimbabwe is built by everyone in the building, not only those at the top table. So let us name them, from the Cabinet to the officials who drafted each statutory instrument.
Red Tape Is a Tax on the Willing
Let us be clear about why this reform matters, because on this platform we welcome what is good as loudly as we scrutinise what is not. Every needless licence is a tax on a person who is trying — trying to farm, to trade, to build a small business, to employ a cousin. And that tax falls hardest on the smallest, because a big company has a lawyer to handle 25 permits, while a widow with a butchery has only her own two feet and her own lost days in a queue.
Readers will hear the deeper theme this journal returns to again and again: Zimbabwe’s future prosperity lies not in extraction and paperwork, but in production, ownership and the capture of value on home soil — the heart of what this platform calls value sovereignty. And you cannot build a productive, value-adding economy on top of a mountain of needless permits. Every levy that punished the farmer for moving a beast, or the manufacturer for storing fuel, was a small tax on making things. Strip those away, and you free capital, time and energy for the real work: farming more, processing more, manufacturing more, owning more of the chain. This reform is the ground being cleared. What matters is what we now choose to build on it.
Now Build Value on the Cleared Ground
Here is where this journal lifts its eyes, because clearing red tape is not the destination — it is the doorway. The real question is not a worried one; it is an ambitious one: now that the path is clearer, what do we build? A cheaper licence is only worth something if it lets a Zimbabwean do more of the work that actually creates wealth — growing, making, processing, owning. That is where the nation’s prosperity truly lies.
How to Turn 291 Cuts Into Real Value
Credit given, now the forward part — the constructive steps that turn a good reform into a prosperous one, aimed squarely at production, ownership and value at home.
From Cleared Ground to Built Value
- Finish what is approved. 62 of 201 local-government fees are done — complete the rest, and publish a public tracker so every citizen can see the path is truly clear.
- Point the freed capital at value-addition. Pair the levy cuts with incentives to process — abattoirs, tanneries, granite finishing, food canning — so the savings flow into making finished goods, not just moving raw ones.
- Reward the maker, not just the trader. Extend the lightest touch to manufacturers, processors and exporters of finished Zimbabwean products — the builders of the value chain.
- Guard the gains. Councils, short of revenue, may quietly invent new charges to replace the abolished ones. Monitor and stop it, so the ground stays clear.
- Tell the nation, in every language. A cut nobody knows about helps no one. Tell the farmer, the maker, the small firm — in Shona, Ndebele and all our tongues — exactly what they no longer owe, so they can put it to work.
Clear the Ground — Then Build the Value
I want to begin, and stay, with praise, because this platform is not in the business of turning every good thing into a worry. Cutting 291 needless levies is real, good, forward-building work, and I say so with a full heart. Anyone who has watched a relative lose days queueing for a permit to sell fish, or pay a levy just to move a beast to market, knows in their bones how heavy these small chains are. To strike 291 of them off is to lift a real weight from thousands of Zimbabweans who are simply trying to build. Vakaita basa — they did good work. And I name them for it, from Professor Ncube who drove it, to Minister Zhemu who announced it, to the unnamed clerk at ZIDA who drafted the statutory instrument that made it law. Every hand in that building did something worth honouring.
And because I love this country and believe in its rise, I keep my eyes on the prize that matters most — the one my research returns to always: value sovereignty. Prosperity does not come from shuffling raw materials and paperwork; it comes from making, processing and owning — capturing the value of our own gold, our own granite, our own cattle, our own crops, here at home. That is the mountain we are climbing. And red tape was one of the boulders in the path. So when the government rolls 291 of those boulders aside, I do not see cause for suspicion — I see the road to the productive economy getting clearer, and I say: good, now let us walk it faster.
So my word is one of encouragement, not caution: build on this. Take the space these cuts create and fill it with factories, processing plants, finishing workshops — turn the freed time and capital of the farmer and the maker into value added on Zimbabwean soil. Finish the fees still pending, guard against old levies creeping back, and above all reward those who make, not only those who trade. Do that, and this reform becomes what it is truly meant to be: not an end in itself, but the cleared ground on which the Second Great Zimbabwe is built. We were told for so long that we were a poor and failing people. We are not. We are a people clearing the path, brick by brick, to build again. Nyika inovakwa nevanhu vayo, vachishanda vakasununguka — a nation is built by its people, working free. Tichavaka — we will build.
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