Zim empowerment plan worries IMF
by Tobias Manyuchi Saturday 02 April 2011
SAVIOUR KASUKUWERE . . . Indigenisation Minister
HARARE – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has raised concern at
Zimbabwe’s controversial drive to force foreign-owned mining firms to sell
majority stake to local blacks, ZimOnline learnt on Friday.
Government officials said an IMF team that left Harare on Thursday after a
three-week consultation mission also expressed worry at plans by the
government to raise salaries for public workers when state coffers were near
empty.
The IMF has during previous consultation missions to Zimbabwe warned
President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s unity
government to put a tight lid on rising wage demands in the public sector
and to ensure its economic empowerment programme does not scare away
badly-needed foreign investors to damage the nascent economic recovery.
“They (IMF) appeared to have been rattled by the indigenisation laws which
gave the mining firms up to September to comply with the law. The gazetting
of the law was ill-timed and nobody saw it coming this fast,” a ministry of
finance official, who declined to be named because he had not been cleared
by his superiors to discuss the matter with the Press.
“During their visit the delegation had also raised concerns about the wage
bill as there appeared to be pressure to raise salaries yet the fiscus
cannot afford,” said the official.
The drastic economic empowerment laws announced last Monday give
foreign-owned mining companies 45 days to submit to Indigenisation Minister
Saviour Kasukuwere details of how they plan to transfer controlling stake to
locals by next September.
Firms that fail to disclose their share-transfer plans within the stipulated
period face prosecution, according to the regulations that have thrown the
mining sector — the economy’s largest – into turmoil.
The empowerment plans are being pushed by Mugabe’s wing of the coalition
government and opposed by Tsvangirai’s MDC party that favours a gradual
approach, fearing that wholesale indigenisation could wreck a fragile
economy.
Analysts say Mugabe maybe intent on putting pressure on foreign miners to
pay more in taxes.
Miners will be torn between pulling out and risk losing rights to the
massive platinum reserves and other minerals to Mugabe’s preferred investors
from China or negotiate revised deals that will see the government getting
more from the country’s resources.
The resource rich southern African nation boasts the world’s second largest
reserves of platinum, has discovered alluvial diamonds which experts say
could generate $2 billion a year and has large gold, chrome and coal
deposits. — ZimOnline