Formalise your operations, vendors told

INFORMAL traders have been urged to formalise their businesses to access finance including loans from banking and other micro-financial institutions.

The Vendors Initiative for Social and Economic Transformation of Informal Traders (Viset) made the call at a meeting held at a Bulawayo hotel yesterday.

Viset jointly organised the meeting with the Bulawayo Vendors and Traders Association.

"There are so many benefits when you formalise. For instance, the government was issuing out loans and funding that came during the COVID-19 era, and the people who registered were the ones who benefited from the initiatives," Viset programmes co-ordinator Prosper Masibi said.

"When you formalise, you get exempted from police brutality. Moreover, it opens doors for your financial ability in terms of being cushioned and getting grants from the government."

Masibi said formalisation would help informal traders to be considered in the national budget.

"Right now, informal traders do not have a budget that stipulates that they contribute a certain amount to the national fiscal, but when they get formalised it helps for them to be allocated in the budget," he said.

Masibi said challenges faced by informal traders include being subjected to police brutality, confiscation of their goods and lack of protection from government, among others.

The main agenda of the meeting was to deliberate on the International Labour Organisation recommendation 204 that speaks to the need for transition from the informal to the formal economy.

In a journal titled Street Vending in Zimbabwe: An Urban Scourge or Viable Enterprise, Evelyn Madziba argued that street vending boosted economic activity if proper support structures were put in place by government.