Foreign banks should indigenise

evade the indigenisation of the sector which is becoming more and more impending, imminent and inevitable with the passage of each day.
The desperate attempts to avoid the indigenisation of this critical and decisive sector for genuine and sustainable economic emancipation of Zimbabweans reached unprecedented levels when life-long soldier and advocate of white imperialist interests disguised as an economic commentator Erich Bloch claimed that plans to indigenise the banking sector has resulted in more than US$6 billion dollars worth of investment being with-held from Zimbabwe.

The source and identity of these faceless investors was not revealed by the attention-seeking Bloch who naively believes that thinking Zimbabweans would be woodwinked by his hogwash and trash the indigenisation programme. Not to be outdone our own Zimbabwean-born managing director of Barclays bank Mr George Guvamatanga got excited when presenting his bank’s financial results, obviously indicating a huge chunk of profit from the sweat of Zimbabweans, and declared that Barclays was now automatically an indigenous bank because it has operated in Zimbabwe for close to 100 years and it has the interests of black Zimbabweans at heart because it floated some shares that any

Zimbabwe could acquire way back in 1991.
What can easily be discerned from the efforts of this coterie of defenders of white capitalism is that the likes of Eddie Cross and Erich Bloch aided by the George Guvamatangas and Rxxs of this world are bent on stifling, ruining and derailing the indigenisation and economic empowerment programme meant for the benefit of the majority of ordinary

Zimbabwean citizens. Of course this group gets solid support from MDC-T leaders like Tendai Biti, Elton Mangoma and Morgan Tsvangirai himself and a host of other Zimbabwean business people enjoying the huge benefits of financial puppetry.
Even a few from Zanu-PF, the primary drivers of the indigenisation and economic empowerment programme, have been sweet talked into believing that indigenisation is only for less important sectors like transport, retail, services etc while the key, critical and sensitive sectors like financial services should be handled with caution, in other words lefts in the hands of foreigners since only they can manage them.

Of course we heard the same tired arguments when the indigenisation of the mining sector was kick-started with the state take-over of majority ownership of diamond mining in Marange. With Marange contributing more than 600 million dollars to the national coffers, despite the spirited attempts by the Western powers to stifle the sale of Zimbabwean diamonds, now even the wily Tendai Biti is crying from the revenue from diamonds and pleading with his paymasters to remove diamond mining companies from the illegal sanctions list. We come back to the question of why the financial services sector is sanctity, why the financial services sector is critical, why the financial services sector is sensitive and the inevitable result why the financial services area should be a no go area for indigenous Zimbabweans?

The bold answer to the questions is that the financial services sector is sensitive and critical for white imperialist interests because it is the last bastion through which they maintain control of African or developing countries’ economies. An analysis of the status of the financial sector in Zimbabwe reveals the outright dominance of foreign banks which is, however, skewed by fact that though they hold the highest share of deposits they advance the least amounts of loans for use by indigenous businesses.
The shamefully low deposit to loans ratio aided by the sifting of millions of money to offshore accounts is enough justification for the calls for the immediate indigenisation and transformation of this sector.

A close analysis of banking figures reveals that the four financial institutions that have foreign parentage such as Barclays, Stanbic, Stanchart, and CABS held more than US$600 million in deposits in 2011 but had very low loan-to-deposit ratios as compared to their local counterparts. The four banks only managed to extend a combined US$311 million in loans during the 12-month period to December, which is markedly below US$431 million that was doled by only one local bank — CBZ Holdings.
Barclays, which held US$172 million in deposits, had extended US$43,6 million by the end of last year, while Stanbic and Stanchart, which held US$296 million and US$217 million correspondingly, loaned out US$100 million and US$110 million respectively. Of the US$118 million purse by CABS, only US$58 million found its way into industry.

This sad state of affairs was aptly captured by the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Dr Gideon Gono in his 2011 Monetary Policy Statement were he noted the negative contribution by internationally owned banks. To quote Dr Gono at lengthy:
The Reserve Bank has noted with serious concern the continued aloof attitude by some multinational banks towards the need to actively support the domestic economy.