Zimbabwe’s central bank chief on Friday held eleventh-hour meetings with International Monetary Fund (IMF) officials to lobby support against Harare’s possible expulsion for debt arrears, state radio said.
Gideon Gono met in Washington with Abdoulaye Bio-Tchane, director of the IMF’s Africa department, and with Tom Scholar, Britain’s executive director to the World Bank and its lending affiliate, the IMF.
It said Gono was also due to meet the representatives of France and Germany.
To avoid expulsion, Zimbabwe will have to garner more than 15% of the vote.
State radio said the 20 African countries on the board hold ”3,1% voting power, Britain has 4,9%, and France and Germany have a combined vote of 11%”, thereby representing a total of nearly 19%.
Gono was to meet the full IMF board of directors on Friday evening, the radio report said.
Zimbabwe last week paid back the Washington-based body $120-million in a surprise move but still owes about $174-million since 2001.
State radio said Gono will ”clarify misconceptions associated with how the country managed to raise $120-million towards liquidating its arrears, which now stand at about $174-million”.
Zimbabwe has denied reports in a South African newspaper that Harare used undeclared foreign exchange to pay back part of its debt.
Gono had said that ”for anyone to suggest that we either raided exporters’ FCAs [foreign currency accounts] or raided any other depositors’ facilities … is scandalous, to say the least”.
If expelled, Zimbabwe would be the second country to be kicked out of the IMF since former Czechoslovakia in 1954.
Zimbabwe’s economy has shrunk by 30% since 2000, when the government began seizing about 4 500 white-owned commercial farms, sending agricultural production plummeting.
President Robert Mugabe’s government has blamed drought and sanctions by the European Union and the United States for the country’s economic decline, characterised by triple-digit inflation and high unemployment. — Sapa-AFP