daniel chigunwe
About 1,300 White Zimbabwean commercial farmers, whose land was acquired for redistribution to the landless majority in the early 2000s, have signed up to receive compensation and those who qualify will be paid in 10-year treasury bills, a government official said.
“We now have to go through the process of vetting them and confirming the amounts that they are owed,” Andrew Bvumbe, head of debt management in the Ministry of Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion, said in an interview on Friday. “With these 1,300, we want to move as quickly as possible. Maybe by the end of the third quarter of this year we want to get this out of the way.”
Under an accord signed in 2020, the government agreed to compensate 4,000 White farmers whose land was redistributed, but it has repeatedly missed payment deadlines. It expects the compensation deal will cost it US$3.5 billion over 10 years.
Payouts will be made for improvements that were made to farms, rather than the land itself, Bvumbe said. “If others start seeing that we are acting, maybe the others will start coming in and they all will be part of the whole process,” he said. – Bloomberg
Bongani Ndlovu