Banking (International Financial Services Centre) Regulations, 2025

These regulations create the Victoria Falls International Financial Services Centre, on Masuwe State land in Victoria Falls, under a special economic zone and under section 78B of the Banking Act. Their stated object is an international financial services centre that is not subject to the commercial law and courts of Zimbabwe except as the regulations themselves provide, with all commercial matters arising inside it settled exclusively under the laws established pursuant to them. Business is to be conducted in freely convertible multi-currencies.

The disapplied statutes are the heart of it. Inside the Centre, nineteen Acts do not apply: the Companies and Other Business Entities Act, the Insurance Act, the Insurance and Pensions Commission Act, the Securities and Exchange Commission Act, the Exchange Control Act, the Pension and Provident Funds Act, the Income Tax Act, the Minerals and Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe Act, the Gold Trade Act, the Revenue Authority Act, the Asset Management Act, the Collective Investment Schemes Act, the National Payment Systems Act, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Act, the Competition Act, the Deposit Protection Corporation Act, the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Act, the Public Entities Corporate Governance Act and the Value Added Tax Act. The Banking Act itself does not apply either, except sections 78B and 81.

What does still apply is stated for the avoidance of doubt: the Suppression of Foreign and International Terrorism Act, the Money Laundering and Proceeds of Crime Act, and all criminal laws. Victoria Falls Municipality by-laws apply to the designated zone with necessary variations.

Governance sits in three layers. A Governing Council chaired by the President, including the Ministers responsible for finance and for justice and any others the President appoints, sets strategic direction. A Technical Advisory Committee advises it and the Minister, made up of the Governor of the Reserve Bank, the CEOs of ZIDA, the Securities Exchange Commission and the Deposit Protection Corporation, the Commissioner of IPEC, the Commissioner-General of ZIMRA, the Director-General of the Financial Intelligence Unit, the Attorney-General or their representatives, plus seven members with finance, legal and technology experience. The Centre itself is a body corporate run by a board of seven to eleven members appointed by the Minister after consulting the President, with a prescribed professional mix, a five-year term renewable for no more than two terms, and disqualification for undischarged insolvency, unrescinded compositions with creditors, certain recent prison sentences, or membership of Parliament. A CEO appointed by the board with the Minister's approval sits on it ex officio.

The Centre licenses its own participants and regulates banks, insurers, capital markets and fintech within the zone, charges fees, and administers arbitration, mediation and conciliation for disputes arising inside it. Licensing procedures and requirements are to be prescribed by the Minister rather than set out here. Operating in the zone without a licence is an offence carrying a fine up to level fourteen or up to five years' imprisonment or both, and where a body corporate offends, its responsible person is personally liable on the same scale.

Two transitional points matter to anyone already there. Victoria Falls Stock Exchange Limited is deemed licensed as a participant from the effective date. Participants licensed before the Centre moves to its designated site operate under these regulations in the meantime, and once the Centre gives notice to relocate they have ninety days to do so. Contracts and acts executed earlier by Victoria Falls Offshore Centre (Private) Limited, the Minister, or anyone acting on the Minister's instruction remain binding as if made under these regulations.

The regulations refer to an "effective date" without defining it and state no commencement date of their own. They were gazetted on 28 March 2025.