* IMF funds to support 2012 budget
* Maize harvest to fall short of 1.8 mln tonne target
HARARE Jan 25 (Reuters) – Zimbabwe is having to
bolster its $4 billion 2012 budget with $110 million from an
2009 emergency IMF fund, a measure of the extent of an acute
foreign exchange shortage in the southern African nation.
Finance Minister Tendai Biti, who has previously opposed
using money from the $500 million IMF emergency facility, said
“liquidity challenges and the need to address our infrastructure
deficit” now outweighed the need not to take on more debt.
In all, Harare owes multilateral lenders including the IMF
and World Bank about $7 billion and is in arrears on its
repayments, precluding it from accessing any credit beyond the
special financial crisis fund.
The money would be used for infrastructure, credit lines for
manufacturing and support for agriculture, he told reporters.
So far, the government had used $150 million of the funds
for agriculture and infrastructure projects, and $142 million to
pay off a debt to the IMF’s Poverty Reduction and Growth Fund
(PGRF), he added.
Biti also said Zimbabwe was unlikely to meet a target of 1.8
million tonnes of maize in its 2011-2012 harvest due to late
rains, but insisted the nation of 13 million people would not
need significant imports.
“Given the late rains, we will not be able to meet the
targeted 1.8 million tonnes, but we’ve not lost more than 10
percent of that,” he said. “Zimbabwe will still be able to feed
itself. We still have our 500,000 tonnes in the strategic grain
reserves.”
The government would be able to maintain its inflation
target of 5 percent or less throughout 2012 despite concerns
over food supply, he added.
(Reporting by Nelson Banya; Editing by Ed Cropley)
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