{"id":3188,"date":"2026-03-19T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zanis.gov.zm\/?p=3188"},"modified":"2026-03-19T15:34:53","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T13:34:53","slug":"comesa-approves-24-hour-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zanis.gov.zm\/?p=3188","title":{"rendered":"COMESA APPROVES 24 HOUR ECONOMY"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">COMMON Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) Secretary General Chileshe Kapwepwe has welcomed Cabinet&#8217;s approval for the country to transition towards a 24-hour economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Ms Kapwepwe says the development aligns with COMESA&#8217;s agenda of harmonising regulations across member states in order to promote seamless trade.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Speaking in Lusaka, Ms Kapwepwe observed that restricted operating hours hinder business growth, noting that extending them will therefore give traders more opportunities to increase their earnings.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&#8220;For us, Zambia is just one of our Member States. So I think it is just going in tandem with what is happening with other countries in the region and it is a very welcome development,&#8221; she stressed.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The Zambia Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ZACCI) also hailed Cabinet\u2019s approval of a 24 hour economy as a bold step to modernise the country\u2019s economic model and align with global trends.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">And in a statement issued to ZANIS, ZACCI President Anthony Kabaghe said the move will boost productivity in manufacturing, retail, logistics and services, while creating jobs and offering flexible working hours.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>COMMON Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) Secretary General Chileshe Kapwepwe has welcomed Cabinet&#8217;s approval for the country to transition towards a 24-hour economy. Ms Kapwepwe says the development aligns with COMESA&#8217;s agenda of harmonising regulations across member states in order to promote seamless trade.&nbsp; Speaking in Lusaka, Ms Kapwepwe observed that restricted operating [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":3187,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanis.gov.zm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanis.gov.zm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanis.gov.zm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanis.gov.zm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanis.gov.zm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3188"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanis.gov.zm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3189,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanis.gov.zm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3188\/revisions\/3189"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanis.gov.zm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanis.gov.zm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanis.gov.zm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanis.gov.zm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}