
The Minister told international media in Davos, Switzerland
last week that he met South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa, his Finance Minister
Lesetja Kganyango and that country’s Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni as part
of negotiations for the package.
Prof Ncube rubbished reports that the neighbouring country
had declined assisting Harare.
He said, “We are at the beginning of the conversations, we
will see how things evolve to see if South Africa can be a partner in our
arrears clearance.
“We know that we have excellent relations that go back
decades, we have a bi-national commission. We have a relationship between the
central banks and ministries of finance.
“You have seen comments from President Cyril Ramaphosa
which have been very positive and we want to thank him for that.
“I just met President Ramaphosa briefly and I also had
coffee with minister Lesetja Kganyago. Yesterday (last week) I met Mboweni.
“We thank President Ramaphosa for the support. South Africa
has full confidence with the Zimbabwe Government.
“It’s not about South Africa extending financial resources
but we also need its support in Bretton Woods institutions (International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank), Paris Club. We need that extra voice from
the region to successfully restructure our debt globally.”
Zimbabwe’s international debt to financial institutions
such as the IMF, the World Bank, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the
Paris Club is about US$7,4 billion.
Prof Ncube said Zimbabwe and South Africa enjoyed cordial
relations through trade.
“We always cooperate with South Africa through trade.
That’s not new; we want to see if that can be increased. This (financial
package deal) is a normal discussion and it’s ongoing. We don’t know where it
will end up in terms of resources that we have requested,” he said.
Prof Ncube said Government was implementing a cocktail of
measures to transform the economy into an upper middle class income by 2030 in
line with President Mnangagwa’s vision.
“We are already implementing fiscal discipline in terms of
reducing civil service, we all took a five percent pay cut from the President,
Vice Presidents, Ministers, Deputy Ministers and heads of parastatals to show
that we are serious about meeting the people of Zimbabwe half way,” he said.
“We are delaying the purchase of vehicles for Ministers and
Members of Parliament, so we are very serious about cuts in the public sector.”
Prof Ncube also explained that the fuel situation had
normalised following President Mnangagwa’s interventions to contain the
artificial shortages.
He defended the fuel of $3.31 per litre saying, “Our fuel
was being bought for something like 40 cents (USD) per litre and was being sold
internally and also externally to other countries.
“Truckers were coming in to fill up and offload in Zambia.
Imagine buying fuel for about 40 cents (USD) and then resell it in Zambia for
over a US$1. So we closed that gap.” Sunday Mail
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