Foreign-owned companies in Zimbabwe could soon find themselves having to pay a 10% tax to fund the country’s black economic empowerment programme that is designed to bring firms under local majority control.
Reuters news agency cited Youth and Empowerment Minister, Patrick Zhuwao, as saying he would propose a 10% levy on all foreign-owned businesses that had not complied with the law, known locally as indigenisation.
Those potentially affected by the new tax would include the world's top two platinum producers, Anglo American Platinum and Impala Platinum Holdings.
"For us to be able to fund empowerment programmes in the long term, we are proposing the introduction of an empowerment levy and we are empowered by law to propose the levy," Zhuwawo was quoted as saying by the state-owned newspaper, The Herald. According to him, the government expected to raise US$93 million annually.
