NEWLY-MINTED Finance minister Mthuli Ncube this week set sail for the United States, together with President Emmerson Mnangagwa, for the United Nations General Assembly in New York where he will engage potential funders and investors on the sidelines of the gathering, but in his race for a rescue package he faces steeplechase-like hurdles.
From New York, Ncube will come back to Harare before travelling to London for a business conference where he will use the opportunity to meet British authorities, investors and likely funders.
Ncube has one mission uppermost in his mind: to get fresh funding for Zimbabwe.
This comes as he and his fellow ministers have been given cabinet-stipulated key performance indicators contained in a confidential government document exclusively obtained by the Zimbabwe Independent this week.
Ncube has been mandated by Mnangagwa’s government to come up with a repayment plan for an US$18 billion debt as well as arrears and to secure offshore lines of credit or fresh funding for the liquidity-starved economy.
He has also been tasked with ending the liquidity crunch and cash shortages which have paralysed the economy, finding a lasting monetary solution to the bond note challenge with the aim of restoring business confidence and ending speculative hoarding of cash. He also has to stop the multi-tier pricing system.
Ncube is further assigned to stabilise the country’s inflation, attract foreign direct investment to ensure economic growth and job creation.
He also has to cut runaway government spending and the resultant fiscal deficit. Government ran a massive US$1,4 billion budget deficit in the half of 2018.
The minister’s other tasks include improving exports to generate foreign currency and building reserves as well as incentivising producers and investors by reducing the cost of doing business.
Zimbabwe’s reconstruction hope lies in getting fresh funding from international lenders, but most of them remain reluctant to resume funding in the absence of substantive political and economic reforms.
As a result, Zimbabwe, which historically relied on international institutions and traditional bilateral creditors, is now relying more heavily on non-traditional lenders — from bond investors, foreign commercial banks, commodity traders, to creditor countries outside the Paris Club.
Source: The Independent