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Set up court to deal with commercial crimes: Makarau

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JUDGE of Appeal Justice Rita Makarau has called on the Legislature to urgently consider setting up a dedicated commercial law court to speedily deal with commercial crimes.

JUDGE of Appeal Justice Rita Makarau has called on the Legislature to urgently consider setting up a dedicated commercial law court to speedily deal with commercial crimes.

VENERANDA LANGA

Justice Makarau told legislators attending a ZimAsset workshop in Harare on Thursday that currently there were delays in the country’s courts in dealing with laws relating to enforcing contracts, something that affected investors who wanted speedy settlement of their court cases.

ZimAsset is a blueprint economic policy document with which government plans to turn around the economy over the next five years.

“When Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku was opening the legal year, he complained about delays in dealing with cases in the High Court, which is the court that does business contracts, and if it takes three years for investors to get a case settled, it makes the country’s business environment unattractive for investors,” Justice Makarau said.

“I am agitating for a dedicated commercial law court that will deal with commercial matters with speed, and most African countries have established those commercial law courts and it is in the power of Parliament to do so,” she said.

Makarau said from her observations, she had noted that the representative role of MPs where they solved issues bedevilling their constituencies had overshadowed their legislative and oversight roles to the extent Bills were passing through without proper scrutiny and Executive decisions were just rubber stamped.

“The World Bank Annual 2013 report ranked Zimbabwe at 170 out of 189 in terms of investment destinations and the criteria they used was to simply look at the country’s laws – whether they supported business and company formation, their friendliness to register companies, procedure and time taken to obtain construction permits, title deeds, commercial stands and to get permanent electricity connection because serious business cannot be conducted on candlelight,” she said.

Justice Makarau said the World Bank report also considered the country’s credit worthiness, investment security laws, tax regime, import and export laws, as well as laws relating to enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency.

“Our laws are not attractive and you as MPs should look at these laws to make ZimAsset attractive.  Other areas you need to look at are immigration laws because business visas are for 30 days.  Our labour laws need to be re-looked because of concern is the exercise of arbitration where people come up with awards of an amount that will cripple the economy,” she said.