Zim still not in clear with IMF
2005-09-01 09:23
Special Report
Four Chinese men face deportation from Zimbabwe after they were arrested for killing more than 40 tortoises for meat, a report says.
A dusty road leads to the village of Wedza, where veterans of Zimbabwe's liberation war eke out a meagre living on their farm cooperative, which after a promising start now brings only despair.
Harare - Zimbabwe on Thursday acknowledged that the repayment of more than a third of its US$300m debt to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) did not automatically avert its threatened expulsion from the global lender.
Zimbabwe late on Wednesday announced it had paid back $120m to the Washington-based lending affiliate of the World Bank, ahead of a crucial bank meeting next Friday on Harare's arrears.
"We are a guilty party from a technical point of view," Zimbabwe Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono was quoted as saying by the state-run Herald newspaper on Thursday.
"All we can do is to plead mitigatory circumstances to our arrears situation and pray that the jury will see for itself how genuine our efforts at self-correction are.
"After all, at school, students who may not have excelled get effort badges and are not expelled," he said.
An IMF team is currently in Zimbabwe for key talks which were extended by two days and ended on Wednesday. The mission is due to fly out on Friday.
Zimbabwe's economy has shrunk by 30% in the past four years following the seizures in 2000 of about 4 500 white-owned commercial farms which sent agricultural production plummeting.
- AFP