Minister Patrick Chinamasa organises easy way to tax vendors.

FINANCE Minister Patrick Chinamasa says government is planning to build industrial parks for informal traders to operate from so as to regularise their trade and enable treasury to collect taxes from them.

This comes after Chinamasa recently said the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) would soon be taxing vendors to raise more money for the cash-strapped State whose revenue base continues to shrink as more companies collapse.

Chinamasa told NewZimbabwe.com that as vendors were of no fixed aboard, it was difficult collect tax from them hence the plan to group them in one area and regularise their activities.

Minister Patrick Chinamasa organises easy way to tax vendors.

“That is our challenge right now as a country; as formal businesses were collapsing and closing that led to rise of the informal sector," said the minister.

“Informal sector by its very nature is very mobile and it’s not at a fixed position; they don’t operate from known premises or from fixed address and that increases the difficulty of collecting any tax from them”.

Chinamasa said he could not give a clear date on which treasury would start collecting levies from thousands of vendors country wide.

“All I can say is that we have strategies to grow some of the players in the informal sector to be formal”.

“And I know that Minister Sithembiso Nyoni (Small to Medium Business Enterprise) is working very frantically on that scope and we can do this through various strategies which include building them (vendors) industrial parks, appropriate to their size so that at least they have a fixed place”.

“When they have a fixed place then we can be able to say what tax we can collect from them if they are doing business”.

Chinamasa further said government was also planning to increase vendors’ access to capital as well as their skills so that they become more productive.

“All this is with the intention of making them formal; we will give them more skills so that they can set up businesses which are successful, enterprises which can then make taxable interest”.

“But that is a process; it cannot happen overnight”.