The Sunday News
Business Reporter
THE Government is set to procure state-of-the-art equipment to be used at all border posts in an effort to curb smuggling.
In an interview, Industry and Commerce Minister Cde Mike Bimha said the equipment would help monitor movement of goods.
Zimra installed scanners at some border posts but some goods were still being smuggled into the country.
“The challenge we are having is that there are people who don’t smuggle through the borders but through other undesignated points of entry. We are working on a number of measures to curb smuggling but we cannot divulge them for security reasons. We are in the process of securing certain equipment that will help us to monitor goods that are smuggled,” Cde Bimha said.
He said Government’s move to suspend import licences for agriculture products was among the measures to curb the smuggling of goods.
“We discovered that there were a lot of fake licences used to bring in certain goods as a result of that we had to come up with a new certificate and instructed the importers to renew or re-apply.”
He said his ministry, working with those of Home Affairs and Finance and Economic Development, were set to meet soon to seek ways of curbing smuggling of goods into the country.
Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) president, Mr Charles Msipa said a number of companies had raised concerns over the continued smuggling of some products into the country, which was exerting unfair competition on them.
“Of course we have various industry associations affiliated to CZI which have raised significant reasons that products such as clothes, cooking oil, batteries and even tyres are being smuggled into the country.
“The concerns are absolutely relevant and we continue to engage the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) on the issue. It’s a continuous process of discussion. It’s a topical issue for us. Of course Zimra have indicated that it was upgrading its facilities at border posts,” Mr Msipa said.
He said the country continued to lose a lot of revenue through goods being smuggled into the country.
“When something is smuggled into the country it means it will evade payment of import duty and it means loss of revenue to the country.
“The product will find its way to the market at a reduced price which is good for the consumer but it affects the sales performance of local manufacturers,” Mr Msipa said.
He said apart from robbing local products of a share of the market, smuggled goods were mostly sold on the informal market hence evading tax payment.
