Zimbabwe is talking with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund on how to clear its debts with International Financial Institutions (IFI).
The finance minister of Zimbabwe, Mthuli Ncube said this at an IMF Press Conference.
He said Zimbabwe had begun issuing bonds with maturities of between two and 20 years in order to pay her creditors and was looking at how they can be traded, while it was also looking to issue bonds to compensate white former farmers over time.
Zimbabwe, which has suffered bouts of hyperinflation in the past 15 years, has over $10 billion in external debt, mostly in arrears. It has not received funding from lenders like the IMF and World Bank for more than two decades as a result.
Ncube said, “We’ve begun to make token payments to the World Bank, the AfDB (African Development Bank), European Investment Bank. And all the Paris Club creditors, 17 of them, we will be making token payments to show that we want to be a good debtor”.
He said IMF staff would visit Zimbabwe in December and then discuss a staff-monitored program in the first and second quarters of 2023.
He said it would enable access to “resources from a sponsor who will help us with bridge funding in order to clear the arrears” to international lenders, and after restructuring its debt to bilateral Paris Club creditors.
