{"id":7376,"date":"2012-01-25T21:10:31","date_gmt":"2012-01-25T19:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/01\/dollar-crunch-forces-zimbabwe-to-draw-down-imf-cash\/"},"modified":"2012-01-25T21:10:31","modified_gmt":"2012-01-25T19:10:31","slug":"dollar-crunch-forces-zimbabwe-to-draw-down-imf-cash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/dollar-crunch-forces-zimbabwe-to-draw-down-imf-cash\/","title":{"rendered":"Dollar crunch forces Zimbabwe to draw down IMF cash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>* IMF funds to support 2012 budget<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>* Maize harvest to fall short of 1.8 mln tonne target<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"articleLocation\">HARARE<\/span> Jan 25 (Reuters) &#8211; Zimbabwe is having to<br \/>\nbolster its $4 billion 2012 budget with $110 million from an<br \/>\n2009 emergency IMF fund, a measure of the extent of an acute<br \/>\nforeign exchange shortage in the southern African nation.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Finance Minister Tendai Biti, who has previously opposed<br \/>\nusing money from the $500 million IMF emergency facility, said<br \/>\n&#8220;liquidity challenges and the need to address our infrastructure<br \/>\ndeficit&#8221; now outweighed the need not to take on more debt.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>In all, Harare owes multilateral lenders including the IMF<br \/>\nand World Bank about $7 billion and is in arrears on its<br \/>\nrepayments, precluding it from accessing any credit beyond the<br \/>\nspecial financial crisis fund.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The money would be used for infrastructure, credit lines for<br \/>\nmanufacturing and support for agriculture, he told reporters.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>So far, the government had used $150 million of the funds<br \/>\nfor agriculture and infrastructure projects, and $142 million to<br \/>\npay off a debt to the IMF&#8217;s Poverty Reduction and Growth Fund<br \/>\n(PGRF), he added.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Biti also said Zimbabwe was unlikely to meet a target of 1.8<br \/>\nmillion tonnes of maize in its 2011-2012 harvest due to late<br \/>\nrains, but insisted the nation of 13 million people would not<br \/>\nneed significant imports.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Given the late rains, we will not be able to meet the<br \/>\ntargeted 1.8 million tonnes, but we&#8217;ve not lost more than 10<br \/>\npercent of that,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Zimbabwe will still be able to feed<br \/>\nitself. We still have our 500,000 tonnes in the strategic grain<br \/>\nreserves.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The government would be able to maintain its inflation<br \/>\ntarget of 5 percent or less throughout 2012 despite concerns<br \/>\nover food supply, he added.\t<\/p>\n<p> (Reporting by Nelson Banya; Editing by Ed Cropley)<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright\">\n<p>         \t\t\u00a9 Thomson Reuters 2012 All rights reserved<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>* IMF funds to support 2012 budget * Maize harvest to fall short of 1.8 mln tonne target HARARE Jan 25 (Reuters) &#8211; 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-7376","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}