Customs and Excise (Suspension) (Amendment) Regulations, 2024 (No. 272)

These regulations replace section 9L of the Customs and Excise (Suspension) Regulations, 2003 (S.I. 257 of 2003) with a much broader duty suspension for the state power utilities.

The suspension is granted for a period of two years on power equipment, critical spares and transformer components imported by ZESA Enterprises (ZENT), the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC), the successor company of ZETDC, and the Zimbabwe Power Company (ZPC). It is subject to whatever conditions the Commissioner-General fixes.

The schedule of eligible goods runs to several hundred commodity codes across roughly sixty tariff headings. The main groups are: rubber conveyor and transmission belting, seals, washers and machinery parts (headings 40.10 to 40.17); flat-rolled steel, bars, angles, shapes and sections, stainless steel and steel wire (72.08 to 72.19); steel structures, tubes, pipes, tanks, poles and stranded wire (73.01 to 73.15); copper wire and stranded conductors (74.07 and 74.09); boilers, turbines, engines, pumps, compressors, cranes, lifting and earth-moving machinery, machine tools, valves and gaskets (84.02 to 84.84); and the electrical core of the list — generators, motors, generating sets, transformers and static converters, electromagnets, batteries, insulators, insulated wire, switchgear, control panels, boards and cabinets, optical fibre cables, carbon electrodes and brushes, and insulating fittings (85.01 to 85.47). It closes with measuring, testing and control instruments (90.25 to 90.32): flow, pressure, gas analysis, spectrometry, gas, liquid and electricity meters, multimeters, oscilloscopes, test benches, thermostats and manostats.

What this means in practice is that the utilities can import essentially the whole bill of materials for transmission, distribution and generation work — including the instruments used to test it — without paying customs duty for two years. It is a substantial revenue concession aimed at the transformer and network repair backlog.

Two points of caution. The two-year period runs from the operation of the substituted section rather than from any date the instrument states, so the closing date should be confirmed with ZIMRA. And the suspension is expressly subject to conditions the Commissioner-General may fix, which are not set out here — importers should have those conditions in hand before entering goods.