The EU Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Aldo Dell’Ariccia recently told a Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) conference on Improving the Business Climate in Zimbabwe that an Interim Economic Partnership Agreement (IEPA) with the EU will come into effect this week. This will facilitate duty-free trade between Zimbabwe and the EU. A full Economic Partnership Agreement is being negotiated through an Eastern and Southern Africa grouping. Trade figures between the EU and Zimbabwe have doubled since 2009. In 2011 the value of this trade was US$ 870 million with a positive trade balance in Zimbabwe’s favour of US$ 276 million.
Other speakers at the conference included COMESA’s Director for Investment Promotion and Private Sector Development, Mr Thierry Mutombo Kalonje, who emphasised that Zimbabwe must create a conducive business environment to attract more foreign investment into both the country and into the regional trade group. He seems to have implied that continued poor international perceptions of Zimbabwe as an investment destination are affecting investment into its neighbours as well as itself. Mr Kalonje said that Zimbabwe has shown commitment to implement a COMESA roadmap towards improving the business environment in the region and that he expected the country to shortly implement further reforms to address the facilitation of business operations. It was, however, agreed that there is a need to speed up the process. An official from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), Cemile Hacibeyoglu, pointed out that Zimbabwe could learn a lot from the experience of countries such as Rwanda, Zambia and Mauritius which have inmproved their rankings in the World Bank Doing Business Indicators. Zimbabwe’s ranking in these indicators is very low, but many people actually doing business in Zimbabwe do feel that Zimbabwe is very under-rated in these rankings
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