Gaborone – Zimbabwe has failed to pay its just US $2 million contribution to the Southern African Development Community kitty this year, blaming the banking system.
According to documents prepared for the weekend’s meeting of SADC ministers, the Zimbabwean delegation claimed the money was “being held up in the banking system as banks are reluctant to conduct transactions from the country”.
It said it was pursuing “alternative transfer transactions in Euro”, but this was costly. It promised to pay its dues before the end of the current SADC summit in Gaborone, which ends on Tuesday.
Zimbabwe has, however, been so broke that it reportedly approached South Africa to host April’s extraordinary SADC summit, which was held in Harare in the end.
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s jet-setting to meet his obligations as both SADC and African Union chairperson this year, has in addition strained the country’s fiscus.
During the summit, Zimbabwe handed over chairpersonship of SADC to Botswana, but not before Zimbabwe’s foreign minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi railed against foreign funding of SADC programmes.
“As long as we are unable to fund our own organisation, the future of our programmes and activities will remain uncertain and SADC will not be wholly ours,” he told the weekend meeting of ministers.
The 15 SADC member states are supposed to contribute about $37 million to SADC’s budget of over $79 million for the 2015/16 financial year.
South Africa’s contribution of $7.4 million is by far the largest, with the second-largest contribution coming from oil-rich Angola, at just over $4 million. The Seychelles pays the least, at $12 3000.
Malawi, which is currently experiencing a financial crisis which persuaded President Peter Mutharika to stay at home, failed to pay its contribution of almost $2 million on time, but promised that the money would reach the SADC secretariat by the end of summit on Tuesday.
The dues of Tanzania ($2.4 million) and Mozambique ($2.1 million) reflected in documents as unpaid, but the two countries said these had since been paid and would reflect in SADC’s accounts soon.
Madagascar has also fallen behind with its payments, and is currently on a five-year plan to repay the more than R9.8 million it still owes the organisation.
All the other member states have paid their dues.
Deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas, who is part of the South African delegation at the SADC summit, said he disagreed with ministers who said SADC had a funding problem.
“The problem isn’t funding, it is about finding bankable projects that benefit the whole region,” he told ANA.
He said there were many bodies that could provide funding for development projects, so SADC had to think carefully about what needs its funding for development should be responding to.
It has been reported that SADC needs about $500 million over the next five years to finance its Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan, which emphasises industrialisation in the region.
SADC has appointed a committee of finance ministers to investigate sustainable ways of funding SADC’s projects, and to come up with proposals at the next summit in a year’s time.
ANA