Zimbabwe: Treasury bills offered to clear debt

Zimbabwe’s government was offering $103 million (R1.1 billion) of treasury bills to help repay some of the central bank’s $1.35bn debt and to finance other government needs, an official at the bank said yesterday. The sale of the securities, which had maturities ranging from three to five years and carried a yield of 2 percent, began yesterday, said the official, who asked not to be identified. “They have issued the tender,” Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa confirmed yesterday, without providing details. The government announced in November last year that it planned to settle the central bank’s debt by offering treasury bills. The bank owed $754.3m to domestic creditors and $596m to lenders outside Zimbabwe, the Herald newspaper reported. In 2012, the central bank failed in its first auction of treasury bills since the country abandoned the Zimbabwe dollar in a bid to curb surging inflation four years earlier. The central bank rejected all bids for the 91-day bills offered on October 4, 2012, as well as two subsequent sales. John Mangudya, the chief executive of CBZ Holdings, Zimbabwe’s biggest bank by assets, will replace Gideon Gono as governor of the central bank on May 1. – Bloomberg