DOING BUSINESS IN ZAMBIA 2019 REPORT
The Doing Business project provides objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement across 190 economies looking at domestic small and medium-size companies. Download full report here.
Zambia scored 85.07 out of 100 in the ‘Starting a Business’ score where 0 is the worst and 100 the best performance. This ranked Zambia at number 3 out of 190 economies assessed (congrats Zambia). The starting a business assessment looked at criteria such as the time it takes to legally register a company, the cost of registration and capital required. Our first E-Hire article commended PACRA on its strive to simplify registration with its new online platform having a lower registration cost than walk-in registration cost.
The next scorecard in the “Doing Business” report is a contentious topic. Zambia’s score for ‘Getting Electricity’ was 61.22 out of 100 with a final rank of 128 out of the 190 economies assessed. This score tallied the reliability of electricity supply, monitoring of power outages and how long restoration takes following an outage. Additionally, the score incorporated the monthly bill for an average warehouse, excavation permit costs and time spent till ZESCO meter connection.
‘Property Registration’ in Zambia scored 49.06 giving the country a ranking of 150 out of the 190 economies assessed. This score included criteria such as land dispute resolution time, access to property rights and time it takes to process title deeds. Time to process titles is stated at 25 days (in reality to most Zambians this feels like 25 years) and measures such computerised Land Registry has been put in place to address the backlog in Land Registry.
‘Getting Credit’ scorecard gave Zambia a 95 out of 100 making it the 3rd best country out of 190 in terms of the ease of getting credit. Zambia has a strong legal rights index to boast as well as credit information depth.
Zambia scored 88.7 out of 100 in ‘Paying Taxes’ category giving the country a ranking of 17 out of 190 economies assessed. This category records the taxes and mandatory contributions that a medium-size company must pay or withhold in a given year, as well as the administrative burden of paying taxes and contributions and complying with procedures such as VAT refund and tax audits.