The country’s points of entry have been described as porous following indications that the smuggling of banned goods into the country continue skyrocketing .
Industry and Commerce Minister Mike Bimha confirmed that the country’s border posts remain a stumbling block in implementing the Statutory Instrument 64 of 2016, which controls the importation of goods into the country.
The SI 64 was enacted in an effort to promote and protect local industries against low quality goods from neighboring countries in June this year.
Minister Bimha made the revelations while appointing a monitoring and evaluation committee that will screen the impact of the import ban over the next two to three years.
Bimha said “we are highly concerned with reports that goods have been filtering in the country despite the import ban we put.
“It can only mean one thing, our borders are porous and we need to do something as soon as possible to put an end to this. As government we came up with the Statutory Instrument in order to protect our local industries and our local products, but there has been rampant smuggling of the same products that we put on restriction list, into the country which leaves a lot to be desired,” said Bimha.
The goods that have been literally banned include coffee creamers (Cremora), Camphor creams, white petroleum jellies and body creams.
Despite the ban, most of these goods continue finding their way into the country through unorthodox means which the minister said needs to be looked into so as to get favorable returns of the import ban.
Bimha further revealed that plans are at an advanced stage to equip the border posts with state of art technological systems that will help curb smuggling,
“We have been working on trying to come with high-tech systems to control our points of entry because we have seen how unreliable the Zimra staff can be.
“When there was a demonstration at the Beitbridge Border Post recently, we were running a trial on the new machines and we were surprised to see that our staffers there were necessitating the smuggling of these goods.
“So we have sped up the process of installing Close Circuit Television (CCTV) at most of our border posts,” Minister Bimha said.
He added that not only is high-tech system reliable in trying to close down on smuggling but said it would help efficiency thereby easing congestion that is normally witnessed especially during public holidays.
