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By Larry Mweetwa
POLICY SHIFT CONSIDERATIONS THE NEWDAWN GOVERNMENT SHOULD URGENTLY REVIEW-MY SUBMISSION TO PRESIDENT HH7
Your Excellency Sir, here are my major policy concerns and I pray Chipo Mwanawasa will take note of this.
1. Most of the businesses in Zambia 🇿🇲 have to be reserved for citizens only and this happens in many countries especially Botswana such as ( hair salons, bricks 🧱 moulding, Barber shops and many other small businesses), a foreigner can’t come all the way from china to start a car wash.
2. There should be a deliberate policy for any investor to partner with a local citizen not only paper but this should be implemented to perfection and life style of locals must change
3. When it comes to citizens empowerment, most youths have no corrateral to support their applications such as houses etc, so only the rich will be favoured. In USA and other Nations for example if I want to start a drug manufacturing company, my Pharmacy degree or medicine should be sufficient to access funding. Kindly can you look into this
4. Kindly revisit ZRA tariffs which are chocking citizens, for example If I buy a car from Japan for K100,000, ZRA will charge me close to K50,000 in duty. This is so unfair because politicians are given weavers to import their cars for free. In Botswana you only pay 11% but for zambia it’s 47% of the cost price.
I think this is extremely unfair to tax citizens in a chocking manner and no wonder a lot of vehicles are packed at ZRA Depots because citizens failed to raise money to clear goods and eventually accrued port fees etc.
What they do in Botswana is that you can have your car bonded and keep it even at your house but you can’t drive it until you raise required funds to clear it thereby saving space at port office and avoiding demurrage charges. Not what is happening now where your car has to remain at Nakonde boarder as you come to hassle for money in lusaka.
5. Export permits for Maize in the past regime was only given to GBM and friends, please can you allow us to form cooperatives from DUNDUMWEZI and Export Maize or mealie meal direct to Congo not where by people like GBM utacizyi akujata plough are the ones making money out of our sweat .
I can go on talking more and more but there are so many policies Mr.President that are affecting citizens but for today I will just leave it here.
