IN this week am duty bound to revisit one form of a business formation that has not made wider in-roads in this country among business entrepreneurs for one reason or another.
In earlier article’s description of business formation under which most Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) register their businesses from Patent and Registration Agency (PACRA), I alluded to the fact that, the research I conducted when I was in the process of writing my first business book entitled ‘Successful Ways of Running a Business’ at PACRA, reviewed that most entrepreneurs involved in running small businesses register their businesses under Sole proprietorships, Partnerships and Private limited companies.
However in my article today I want to reflect on the impact of partnership businesses in this country and showcase one idea that has caught the admiration of many including myself.
And before I do that I want to look at want is meant by partnership, drawing lessons from the partnership act of 1890 from the United Kingdom who first draw it.
One of the features of the partnership kind of business is that, this is a business that  has two or more people  who have agreed to carry, own a business as co-owners and agree to share  the profits and losses in the agreed upon ratios among others.
The written agreement among the partners in this case becomes a very important document in the sense that it becomes essential so that partners clearly understand their duties, privileges and obligations.
Partnerships are easily formed with few legal restrictions. A considerable amount of mutual trust must exist among the partners.
In this country not so many partnerships kind of businesses have succeeded in comparison to sole proprietorships and private limited companies respectively.
This so because of lack of mutual trust and the non enforcement of agreements as earlier outlined in the document.
One partner in one of these partnerships businesses confessed that it is not easy to implement partnerships agreements in this country because of greedy.
He confessed that a partnership can be started on good footing, but along the way greed grips in especially if one partner feels is contributing more than other partner or partners disregarding the earlier agreed upon document.
Unlike partnerships kind of businesses in the western countries succeeding, they have not serious made headways in countries like Zambia.
I would like to apologise in advance that I will not mention names of the people involved simply to protect their privacy as requested.
Four taxi drivers have come to form want I relate to; as a partnership kind of a business although in reality to them think it is just a business arrangement.
In their oral agreement which I think strongly should be formulated as a written agreement, they have agreed among them that each member of the group should contribute K50 every day for the number of days in a month and this is a mutual agreement among them.
They have emphasised that trust and commitment are some of the ingredients of this oral agreement.
The aim of this agreement is to ensure that on each day K200 is banked and because of this, they have opened a joint account to which each member is a signatory when it comes to withdrawing the money.
The aim of this arrangement is to ensure that each member at some stage of this agreement is empowered to own his own car.
This so because at the moment they work as tax drivers on behalf of those who have employed them.
When I looked at the financial projections of this arrangement, I was filled with a smile of gladness and considered it as a very smart workable arrangement.
One other taxi driver and not part of the four, told me that the owner of the vehicle is driving has offered to surrender the same vehicle if he meets the threshold of K60,000 in cashing, from the time he was given the vehicle.
When I compared the two situations, I still admired the arrangement put forward by those four taxi drivers as the best option of empowering themselves by owning cars.
Imagine K200 raised every day for 30 days gives you the sum of K6,000 and three months down the line it gives you K18,000.00 and this will enable one of them to own a good second Toyota Corolla.
And in one year all the four will be driving their own cars. But for the other one whose target is to reach K60,000, it will take two years to reach the target and the vehicle may be subject to accelerated depreciation.
Every week he will be raising K600 and in a month he will be raising K2, 400 which when divided into K60,000 it will take 24 months which is two years.
In two years under the earlier plan, eight taxi drivers will own cars.
My question before I wrap up my column. Is this the new form of emerging partnerships in Zambia?
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