Zimbabwe has improved its global ease of doing business ranking to 155 up from a ranking of 159 for the comparative prior year, the latest World Bank Doing Business 2019 Report has revealed.

The country’s score also improved by 1,92 percent to 50.44, according to World Bank Group Flagship Report, which compares business regulation for domestic firms in 190 economies across the globe.

Zimbabwe is ranked among countries that managed to reduce regulatory complexity and cost or strengthened legal institutions in 2017 /18.

This grouping of countries which includes Singapore and Mauritius is said to have “cut or simplified post registration procedures (tax registration, social security registration, licensing)”.

The country is also said to have made strides in making it easier to deal with construction permits by reducing time for processing permit applications.

According to the World Bank, Zimbabwe made dealing with construction permits faster by adopting a one-stop shop for building plan approvals.

The World Bank also acknowledged the country’s efforts on improving the sharing of credit information after it “introduced bureau or registry credit scores as a value added service”.

“Zimbabwe expanded the number of borrowers listed by its credit registry with information on their borrowing history from the past five years to more than five percent of the adult population,” reads the report.

Another area where the country made positive strides is that of starting a business.

The country is said to have made starting a business easier by reducing the time needed to obtain a business licence.

This now takes 32 days and 9 procedures.

Getting credit information has also improved through increased coverage of the credit registry and providing consumer and commercial credit scores to banks and financial institutions.

Zimbabwe also made enforcing contracts easier by making judgments rendered at the appellate and supreme court level in commercial cases available to the general public online.

- Herald