Patrick Chinamasa, Zimbabwe Finance Minister
In addition to other reforms agreed with an International Monetary Fund delegation, Zimbabwe has said that it needs an annual growth rate of up to 8 percent over the next 10 to 15 years to revamp its economy.
Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa and Reserve Bank governor John Mangudya are leading Zimbabwe’s re-engagement with international lenders and the finance minister has previously said he has had to overcome divisions within Mugabe’s cabinet to pursue that process.
Chinamasa said that new loans from international lenders will only come if the drought-stricken Southern African nation showed the capacity to introduce a raft of economic reforms.
The IMF executive board will on 2 May consider Harare’s plan to repay $1.8 billion in arrears.
“Any reform agenda is painful. The journey we have travelled has been difficult and will remain difficult,” Chinamasa told a forum discussing Zimbabwe’s future prospects.
Chinamasa also said recently that President Robert Mugabe had agreed to major reforms, including compensation for evicted white farmers and a big reduction in public sector wages as the government tries to woo back international lenders.
Zimbabwe is trying to emerge from more than a decade of isolation that saw the IMF, World Bank and African Development Bank freeze lending in 1999.
