Johannesburg - Zimbabwe wants South Africa to lend it affordable money so it can reconstruct its collapsed infrastructure, such as the barely functioning National Railways of Zimbabwe.
Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa asked a group of visitors to Harare from the Development Bank of South Africa, Transnet and the Public Investment Corporation, to help fund public utilities which collapsed over the last few years. Insiders say repairs to the railways alone would cost about $700-million.
“Charge us fairly... don't charge us interest rates which are way above what you charge South African businesses,” Chinamasa told the delegation.
He said Zimbabwe needed to industrialise and that would help stop the flow of economic refugees into South Africa.
He also said Zimbabwe was unfairly portrayed as a high-risk country.
Zimbabwe owes the International Monetary Fund (IMF) $140-million and cannot borrow any more from the institution until it repays that debt.
It also owes foreign companies at least $10-billion, and some of those debts are more than 20 years old.
Chinamasa had to find $180-million last month to repay Chinese debts before President Robert Mugabe's official visit to China.
Chinamasa says he is “embarrassed” at the size of the public service and that he struggles to pay the wage bill each month which consumes about 80 percent of state income.
The central bank owes about $1.3-billion from the hyper inflationary era of 2006-2009, when Gideon Gono, then governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, confiscated foreign export earnings from many private and public domestic bank accounts. Some of that cash was used to buy luxury cars and farm equipment for Zanu-PF leaders.
Statistics provided by South Africa's Trade and Industry Department show that the trade gap between Zimbabwe and South Africa continues to widen. In 2012, Zimbabwe imported R18.9-billion worth of goods from South Africa against exports of R3.1-billion. Imports rose a further 20 percent last year.
Independent Foreign Service