An International Monetary Fund delegation is due to meet Zimbabwe’s finance minister on Wednesday a day after the central bank released a report blaming the country’s economic crisis on sanctions imposed by the West.
A five-member IMF team arrived in Harare on Tuesday to assess the Southern African country’s economic health after it narrowly escaped expulsion in September last year after making an unexpected payment to relieve some of its outstanding debt to the world lending body.
The delegation is scheduled to meet Finance Minister Herbert Murerwa and officials from the finance ministry and the central bank on Wednesday.
Reserve bank governor Gideon Gono in the report blamed Zimbabwe’s poor economic performance on targeted sanctions imposed against senior government officials by Western countries four years ago.
“The combined effects of declared and undeclared sanctions on Zimbabwe has been to worsen the country’s balance of payment position,” the report said.
“The capital account, traditionally a surplus account, has been in a deficit since 2000. This largely resulted from the perceived high country risk by both multilateral and bilateral creditors.
“As such, international investors preferred other countries for investments, thus depriving Zimbabwe of the much needed foreign direct investment.”
Last October Gono promised the remainder of Zimbabwe’s IMF debt — about $144,3-million — would be paid in two instalments in February and November this year.
The previous month the country had chipped in $120-million — more than a third of its outstanding foreign debt — gaining a six-month reprieve.
Before the payment Zimbabwe risked becoming the second country to be kicked out of the IMF since the former Czechoslovakia in 1954.
For the past six years Zimbabwe’s economy has been in a slump characterised by three-digit inflation, now hovering at about 500%, and chronic shortages of foreign currency and basic goods.
More than 80% of the population lives below the poverty line and more than two-thirds are jobless. – AFP