Tight immigration laws hindering economic growth

TIGHT immigration laws are costing the country opportunities of addressing high unemployment levels with reports that at least 600 jobs were lost when a South African investor was denied a permit to assemble mining equipment in the country.

A Bulawayo-based labour expert, Mr Davies Ndumiso Sibanda, said the country's immigration laws hindered investment and militated against many temporary jobs.

He, however, would not disclose the name of the South African company for professional reasons.  The company was supposed to fabricate pieces of equipment for one of the mines in the country.

"There could have been creation of many temporary jobs for locals if those South Africans had been allowed entry on temporary or special permits for two or three weeks up to the commissioning stage of the equipment," said Mr Sibanda, adding that the project only required about four to five South African engineers.

According to Mr Sibanda, the pieces of equipment ended up being fabricated in South Africa's Polokwane town, taking jobs back to the neighbouring country at the expense of locals.

Zimbabwe's immigration laws require that technical experts who wish to work on projects requiring importation of skills into the country should only be allowed to come in when it has been established that no locals possess similar expertise.

"Our immigration laws lose sight of the fact that bringing in engineers from foreign countries to do such projects, most of which are infrastructure related, leaves the country with infrastructure that will benefit more people in future," said Mr Sibanda.

Mr Sibanda said Zimbabwe must learn from neighbouring countries such as Zambia, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) whose immigration laws were flexible and investor-friendly.

"When we needed 900 permits to perform a task in Zambia for two years, their government allowed us to bring our team despite the availability of the jobs in that country.

They understood that their people had not yet jelled into our team and after the job we came back home and left the infrastructure benefiting people there," he said.

Mr Sibanda said the country's immigration laws needed to be sensitive to the changing systems of the world and move from a repressive thinking which made it difficult to even get a single permit.

"Zambia revamped their permits last year, varying them to 12 different types that are investor-friendly and even a country that is struggling like DRC has a more investor-friendly legislation despite security risks," he said.

In Zimbabwe, investors' permits can be processed within 14 normal working days after submission of the application, while in other countries they can be obtained at the airport upon arrival.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa, in his 2015 budget, said it was critical to focus on implementing the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim Asset) strategies and policies meant to grow the economy and create wealth to develop the country.

He also said the economy needed substantial domestic and foreign direct investment, and other support targeting infrastructure and investment for the export markets.

"This budget is primarily a package of policy interventions to unlock the economy's productive potential, supported by both domestic and external resources," he said.

Speaking about the minister's intentions to align policies with investment needs, Mr Sibanda said the inclusion of positive immigration laws would be ideal.

"We just need to turn the country into an investor-friendly environment and the lessons to be learnt are not very far," he said, adding that Tanzania and Zambia were good models.

Mr Sibanda also said he had been to countries like South Africa where investors discouraged each other from investing in Zimbabwe because of tight immigration laws.

"You would want to be a patriot in such cases but it's difficult with such unfriendly legislation so you watch investments being channelled elsewhere," he said.

The Zimbabwe Investment Authority acknowledged in the past that they were engaging the relevant authority in addressing immigration issues after complaints from potential investors.

The 2015 budget framework anticipated revenues of $4,1 billion, translating to about 28,1 percent of nominal Gross Domestic Product of $14,594 billion based on the 2015 GDP growth projection of 3,2 percent.

Expenditure is estimated to be at $4,115 billion, giving a small deficit of $15 million.