Zimbabwe has cleared its financial arrears with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), after settling its 15-year-old 107.9 million dollar debt, the Bretton Woods institute said on Friday.
“On October 20, 2016, Zimbabwe settled its overdue financial obligations to the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT) of the IMF. Zimbabwe had been in continuous arrears since 2001,” IMF spokesperson Gerry Rice said in a statement.
“To settle these obligations, which amounted to 783 million Special Drawing Rights (SDR) (about 107.9 million dollars), Zimbabwe transferred part of its SDR holdings kept at the IMF to the PRGT account. Zimbabwe is now current on all its financial obligations to the IMF.”
The cash-starved investment-hungry country has been in arrears with the institute since 2001, used its SDR, as allocated to all IMF members in 2009 in a financial rescue package move meant to settle all outstanding debts.
As part of its package, Zimbabwe got 500m dollars in special drawing rights.
After settling the IMF debt, Zimbabwe now owes the African Development Bank 601 million dollars and the World Bank 1.15 billion dollars.
The country’s debt overhang, at 10.8 billion dollars, continues to be a major impediment to its re-engagement with the international community and limits access to concessional funding.