WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2011-01-04 Time: 09:00:04 Posted By: News Poster
By Kudzai Chimhangwa
A walk around the streets of Harare will reveal a hive of activity as people hurriedly move from one street corner to another oblivious of the unfriendly weather or lurking municipal policemen.
“I’m on my way to the Gulf complex where I will buy two bags of socks and napkins from the Nigerians then sell them to the Indians and Chinese downtown,” says a young woman with a baby strapped on her back.
She claims that on a good day she can make up to US$20, enough to feed herself and her children while saving capital to buy more goods for resale.
More people are resorting to informal business, which has become the biggest employer in Zimbabwe.
Ranging from buying and selling various commodities, innumerable barbershops, salons, backyard carpentry, unregistered vehicle mechanics and communal farming, the informal sector constitutes individuals and organisations that are not paying tax.
Most of Harare’s streets and buildings have slowly been turned into tuckshops as foreigners with sufficient capital and business acumen have snapped up opportunities to rent small spaces and open shops.
Yet the majority of financial transactions remain in the informal as opposed to the formal sector.
Some people commute into Harare from as far as Bindura, Shamva and Chinhoyi among others in order to buy various products for resale back in their towns.
Products that have become popular in small towns include electrical accessories, clothing and footwear which can be obtained at cheap prices in the competitive Central Business District.
Such minuscule transactions are the order of the day, not only in Harare but several cities and towns throughout Zimbabwe.
Experts contend that substantial financial transactions are occurring on a daily basis in the informal sector as the rate of unemployment hovers above 90%.
Informal traders are not too keen either on depositing their hard earned monies in banks as the ravaging effects of lost confidence in the financial sector owing to the pre-2009 hyper inflationary era still lingers in their memories.
Economist John Robertson argues that there is a lot of motivation for most people to remain in the informal sector.
“Most of Zimbabwe’s informal sector activity is in buying and selling which does not add much to the gross domestic product because it is a service industry,” said Robertson.
The credit system was once supported by a vibrant and productive farming sector as farmers could lodge their title deeds with banks in anticipation of the cropping season according to Robertson.
The demise of this organised system of managing the formal sector based on productivity has contributed to the growth of the informal sector.
“The growth of this sector is the effect of the lack of options.
“Communal farmers as opposed to erstwhile large scale commercial farmers will continue to engage in small scale farming for subsistence purposes but the country’s productivity remains low with little or no tax remittances,” Robertson said.
Experts told a business indaba in October that the large informal sector constituting up to 60% of the country’s economic activity is a reflection of the low levels of economic development.
“The informal sector is an opaque world of business transactions.
“Zimbabwe tops the world list of economies with informal sector activity and from our observations across many countries in the world, a large informal sector inhibits economic growth,” said Greg Lebedev, chairman of the Centre for International Private Enterprise.
Original Source: 
Original date published: 30 December 2010
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201101030834.html?viewall=1