Minister of Finance Herbert Murerwa has predicted improved relations between Zimbabwe and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as IMF experts said the country still has major work to do to gets its economy in order.
IMF experts wrapped up a weeklong visit to Zimbabwe over the weekend. In a statement released on Monday, the IMF said though ”useful” discussions were held with Murerwa, Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono and other officials, the country’s economic crisis still calls for major and fundamental structural reforms.
The IMF called for improvements in governance, liberalisation of the currency exchange rate, the strengthening of property rights to guarantee investment, and reforms of inefficient, corrupt and debt-ridden state enterprises and government bodies.
The IMF suspended loans to Zimbabwe as its agriculture-based economy crumbled with disruptions caused by the seizure of thousands of white-owned commercial farms that began in 2000. The often-violent seizures, and erratic rains, led to acute shortages of food, gasoline and hard currency earned from diminished agricultural exports, mining and tourism.
State radio said Murerwa believes Zimbabwe has averted possible expulsion from the IMF scheduled for discussion at the financial institution’s executive board review meeting in March.
Before an IMF meeting last September, Zimbabwe made a surprise $120-million payment of its IMF debt of $295-million.
Gono last month called for an end to land and property seizures, but these are continuing, farmers and civic groups say. Owners of private homes in the upmarket Borrowdale Brooke suburb of northern Harare last month received government notices to relinquish their properties on the perimeter of a mansion owned by President Robert Mugabe, lawyers acting for the homeowners said.
The notices from the ministry of local government and public works said the homes fell within a security area around the mansion, raising fears of more seizures of targeted properties near government buildings on alleged security or strategic grounds.
Gono last month also called for measures to curb burgeoning official corruption, citing black-market trading in scarce gasoline and fertiliser by political and government leaders and ruling-party cronies, allocated former white-owned farms, who received subsidised fuel and fertiliser they did not use to till the land.
The IMF statement said without comprehensive economic reforms, the nation’s economic prospects remain bleak.
It said the experts’ mission to Zimbabwe came at a time of continued food shortages, exacerbated by hard-currency shortages for food imports and inefficient food distribution.
The mission called for the provision of what it described as the critical priorities of adequate social safety nets and food security, paid from the national Budget, for vulnerable groups including internally displaced families and those affected by HIV/Aids in a nation where Aids-related illnesses kill an estimated 3 000 people a week. — Sapa-AP