AN International Monetary Fund (IMF) team is in Harare where it is offering technical assistance to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) on Zimbabwe Asset Management Company (Zamco).
BY VICTORIA MTOMBA
RBZ governor John Mangudya confirmed the development yesterday, saying the team was offering technical guidance to Zamco, a company set up three months ago to house the country’s non-performing loans.
IMF resident representative Christian Beddies said: “The team has been here for the past two weeks to make sure that what we do is not alien, but is standard to what the rest of the world is doing. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and the International Monetary Fund are working on the operationalisation of Zamco and they complete the task today (yesterday) and the team will leave today.”
Beddies said the team came in December last year and they were helping in the setting up of Zamco.
Non-performing loans have risen from 1,6% in 2009 when the country adopted the multi-currency regime to 20% in 2014.
This means that for every $1 that is borrowed 20 cents is not coming back into the banking system, thereby choking the financial sector.
Meanwhile Beddies said the review mission on the Staff-Monitored Programme (SMP) was also in the country and would complete its tasks next week.
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He said the team was doing the first review for the successor of the SMP and setting the targets for 2015 and agree on policy with the authorities.
An SMP is an informal agreement between country authorities and the IMF staff to monitor the implementation of the authorities’ economic programme.
The country signed the SMP in 2013 which was one of the first agreements that the country signed in more than a decade.
The SMP’s successful implementation will help the country in reducing its debt that is over $9 billion and further increase its chances of accessing lines of credit from multilateral financial institutions.
