IMF executive arrives

Paulo Neuhaus, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) assistant director for Africa, has arrived in Zimbabwe to join a bank team that came last week on a “technical mission” to evaluate the state of the Zimbabwean economy, media reports said.

Neuhaus was able to see first-hand the desperate shape of the economy as queues of hundreds of cars ringed service stations and the fuel shortage bit increasingly hard. IMF officials would not comment but economists said there was no likelihood of the bank providing any kind of financial support.

The IMF has frozen lending to Zimbabwe for about five years, with the exception of the disbursement of one tranche of a small loan last year, which was withdrawn amid reports that President Robert Mugabe’s government had misled the bank about its spending on the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The Western donor community withdrew all balance of payments support in sympathy. Since then, they have severely cut back aid to Zimbabwe in protest against rampant human rights abuses, particularly during the run-up to parliamentary elections in June.