FRIDAY, 5.30PM:
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe met with war veterans on Friday to reveal how he plans to pay them despite a lack of ready funds. He urged the veterans to accept gratuities in the form of government bonds, rather than cash. The payout, which will recompense 40 000 liberation soldiers, is expected to amount to four billion Zimbabwean dollars.
Mugabe said: “We discussed various instruments on how best we can pay them their money and we agreed on the issue of bonds as one way of doing so to lessen pressure on the exchequer.”
THURSDAY 8.45AM:
THE Zimbabwe stock exchange fell a record 668 points or 7,3% on Thursday — just as the IMF had given its nod to President Robert Mugabe’s plans to raise extra funds for war veteran pensions. The slide appears to have been prompted by fears over the pending farm land redistribution, and by a run on the currency by foreign speculators.
Business Day on Friday quotes market analysts commenting that the market has lost confidence, with everything pointing towards the negative. Chief is a concern about the ability despite Reserve Bank intervention of the Zimbabwe dollar to hold its level in the long term. Foreign investors want to move out, says one broker quoted by Business Day, and local investors are following suit.
20