The Ministry of Finance says the country’s infrastructure and utilities development funding was constrained, prompting government to engage pan-African infrastructure investment platform, Africa50, for assistance on innovative financing options.
Addressing a press conference in Harare recently, Deputy Finance Minister, Clemence Chiduwa, said the country’s current financial requirements for infrastructure development were around US$40 billion.
He was speaking after a meeting with Tshepidi Moremong, Chief Operating Officer for Africa50.
“Our funding requirements for infrastructure covering all the sectors of the economy and all the 14 priority areas is amounting to US$40 billion but having looked at our financing auctions and the fiscal space that we have, we are constrained in that area so having consulted Africa50 and Zimbabwe as one of the shareholders to Africa50 we then discussed innovative financing auctions and one of the auctions is on asset recycling,” Chiduwa said.
“So, Africa50 is here for us to discuss that option and we have discussed quite a number of ways that we can use that financing option to finance our projects and the projects that we are looking at, are those projects that are in the ICT sector especially the ones on fibre optics and the development of fibre is in line again with the National Development Strategy (NDS 1) where digital economy is a priority area and we are also looking at energy development and also infrastructure development, especially on airports.
“On the part of Africa50, we are also looking at them, hand holding us especially with regards to the identification of projects and also how best we can identify projects that we think are bankable, viable and low hanging fruits.”
Zimbabwe is currently undertaking infrastructure projects such as the Harare- Beitbridge highway, the Mbudzi lnterchange, the Gwayi Shangai and Kunzvi-Musami dams, Robert Mugabe International Airport expansion, among others.
