General Statement by the Governor
Ambassador of the Republic of Zimbabwe

The cooperation between IFAD and Zimbabwe that dates back to 1980 with programmes targeted at uplifting the standards of the poor, has provided us with an avenue to involve farmers in fight against poverty and facilitate sustainable rural development so as to achieve economic growth.

Mr Chairman,

Zimbabwe, like most other Southern African countries, has demonstrated vulnerability to natural catastrophes, i.e. floods and three consecutive years of droughts with long dry spells heavily impacting on production, particularly by the poor farmers whose agriculture is rain fed. Although production had begun to improve in the last season, the current season has not spared the SADC region, as rains started later than usual, and has also dampened the prospects of full recovery of the sector in the short run. Faced with a choice between averting a humanitarian crisis by meeting the high demand for foreign exchange to import food, and maintaining IFAD obligations, the Government of Zimbabwe could not settle its arrears with IFAD in 2002 and 2003. This led to a continued suspension of disbursements of foreign exchange to the Dry Areas Development Programme. Despite the suspension, my government with its meagre resources, honoured its obligations locally and continued running IFAD projects to fruition to the extent that on balance, it is IFAD owing the people of Zimbabwe today.

 

We have appealed to IFAD to seriously consider the specific circumstances confronting the country and work out an amicable rescheduling of repayments that will be consistent with the capacity of the country, taking into account what we have spent already on the Organisation’s obligations. It is my sincere hope that it will be possible to restart the dry areas programme soon. Negotiations to the effect are at an advanced stage. Immediate resumption of disbursements will be in everyone’s interest.

Mr. Chairman, allow me to reiterate the impact of suspension on the poor and on the sustainability of programmes. The suspension and withdrawal of co-financiers affected project momentum as a result of scaling down the speed and project activities, greatly impacting on the commitment of stakeholders and welfare of beneficiaries who had honoured their part of the social contract. The government, in spite of the success of the programme and the shared vision of expanding the scope of the project to cover other provinces, could not sustain the operations of the Project Facilitation Unit beyond December 2003. Project activities, such as community investment projects have had to be incorporated in the normal operations of line ministries where the administration is already institutionalised.

For us, the programme, which has been running since 1996, has greatly transformed our approach to rural development. Communities that participated significantly contributed to, and took ownership of their projects, enabling them to take responsibility for managing and maximising the sustainable use of the natural resources at their disposal. We would like this to approach to be a major focus in the development of the dry areas development strategy for the country as a whole, but that is if the programme is resumed timeously.

Mr. Chairman,

This year’s theme ‘Trade and Rural Development’ could not have been discussed at more opportune time particularly for Zimbabwe. As part of the agrarian reform, a Land Review Commission was set up by His Excellency the President of Zimbabwe, to report and define the status of the programme, the underlying principle being that land reform cannot begin and end with land re-distribution alone but that it should improve/advance people’s social and economic circumstances and conditions. To this end, the Government of Zimbabwe would be working with cooperating partners to secure the necessary resources i.e. financial, technical, human resources to support the five pillars pivotal to the success of the agrarian reform process. One of these pillars is access to domestic and international agricultural markets by the rural farmers, in pursuit of increasing their incomes and raise their standard of living. To this end, we would like to strengthen our capacity in trade negotiations both regionally and internationally.

In December 2003 we initiated a structural reform of the economy, has been initiated, starting with a monetary policy to assist government to reduce expenditure and to address problems of a parallel market by allowing auctioning of the foreign exchange on the open market under the supervision of the central bank. Preliminary effects of this policy are:

(i) the appreciation of the Zimbabwe dollar on the auction floor,
(ii) free availability of fuel and other scarce commodities, reduction in prices of most imported goods including fuel,
(iii) a general restoration of confidence in the financial sector, and
(iv) a firm commitment to honour obligations of International Financing Institutions. It is against this background that proposals for the resumption of cooperation with IFAD is being made.

Mr. Chairman, allow me to share my views with the governors on a matter I feel concerns us all. We have all acknowledged past successes of IFAD programmes and noted the challenges being faced by many of us. The IFAD’s grand mission of helping the poor is in danger. Just looking at two main position papers i.e. the 2004 project cycle and contribution to the 6th Replenishment Fund tells a story that we should not over look. In brief, the number of countries benefiting in my region is dwindling, so is the amount of voluntary contribution to the Replenishment Fund. I think there is a direct correlation between the two. We run the danger of overlooking our mission statement i.e. being there for the poor.

Regarding the performance based allocation system, we hope that the system will not be used to further exclude many of the deserving cases from poor communities. IFAD is not a bank, nor is it a political institution, but we are afraid to see these elements slowly creeping into its mission.

We do hope that the IFAD programme will progressively incorporate lessons from the experiences it draws from its contact with the poor in ongoing programmes and use these to strengthen is philosophy of assisting the poor to be responsible for their resources. I would like to conclude by thanking IFAD for its role in helping resource poor farmers in developing countries to be active participants in development.

I thank you.