THOMAS Zondo Sakala, the former vice president of the African Development Bank (AfDB), has been appointed chief executive officer of the Infrastructure Development Bank of Zimbabwe (IDBZ) with effect from September 1.
BY BUSINESS REPORTER
He takes over from Charles Chikaura who completes his second five-year-term on August 31, Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa said in a statement.
Sakala is a former AfDB vice president (country and regional programmes), who resigned last year to contest the presidency of the bank with the backing of the Sadc bloc. The top post was won by Nigerian Akinwumi Adesina, who coincidentally starts work as the bank’s president on September 1.
Sakala is a development banker with a Bsc and Msc degrees in Economics from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria and worked for AfDB for 31 years.
IDBZ is seen as driving the country’s infrastructure projects according to the economic blueprint, the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation.
The bank has a healthy balance sheet after government took over the $38,2 million legacy debt. IDBZ had equity capital of $32,3 million as at December 31 2014. The legacy debt had limited IDBZ’s capacity to raise debt and equity capital in the regional and international capital markets. In a statement accompanying IDBZ’s annual results for 2014, board chairman Willard Manungo said the bank would leverage on a healthy balance sheet to access lines of credit from local, regional and international capital markets for deployment into key sectors of the economy.
Government is the largest shareholder with an unassailable 87,2% equity. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe is a distant second with a shareholding of 12,42%. The remainder is owned by seven shareholders that include the African Development Bank, German Investment and Development Corporation and the European Investment Bank among others.
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IDBZ was established in 2005 as a successor organisation to the Zimbabwe Development Bank with an expanded mandate mainly focusing on infrastructure development, a key enabler in the social-economic development of the country.
IDBZ aims to be a $1 billion financial institution by statement of financial position size by 2018.
