Mugabe celebrate $4 b Kariba Dam project Chinese loan, it was a unsigned decoy!

 

“The China Export and Import Bank has withheld funds for the Kariba South Hydro Power expansion until the government clears its previous loan obligations,” reported Bulawayo 24 Staff Reporter.

“The decision is likely to delay completion of the mega electricity project expected to generate an additional 300 megawatts.”

 

When Mugabe announced the $4 billion project finance deal following his begging mission to China in August 2014, he gave the story as positive a spin as he could. This was the first bit of money into his ZimAsset begging bowl and he wanted celebrate after over a year of being mocked by the empty bowl. Now the truth of that $4 billion from the Chinese is coming out.

 

First of all what Mugabe had been looking for out of the $27 billion ZimAsset plan was hard cash in the form of budgetary support. The Chinese had told Mugabe to his face that they would never consider it because he “was a bad debtor”.

 

Second the Chinese made sure it was understood the $4 billion project finance was subject to satisfactory feasibility studies and now it turns out that was not the only condition; Zimbabwe has to clear all its outstanding debts too!

 

Pay all its outstanding debts with China! Pay with what; spit! Here is a regime that is failing to pay its civil servants; every month Finance Minister Chinamasa has to borrow money, shift money from one account to another, read the political wind careful to decide which group of civil servants are least likely to strike if he fails to pay them, etc. The only civil servant whose expenses have been paid on time are Mugabe’s expenses, he is the only who seems to think the country is enjoying an economic boom instead of the economic meltdown.

 

The Chinese must have known that $4 billion would never be drawn out because Zimbabwe will never repay its outstanding debt.

 

A month after celebrating the Chinese $4 billion projects deal Mugabe announce a Platinum Mining deal with Russia worth $3 to 4 billion. The Russian economy has not been doing well ever since and so the start of that project is in doubt.

 

If Mugabe thought the signing of Chinese and Russian deals would open the flood gates of other nations wanting in on the act; he was wrong. No one has done so. A number of Europeans, notably the British, the French and Germanys have all sent high powered trade delegations and they all expressed interest in investing in Zimbabwe but – the all too familiar word in Zimbabwe – not until the country’s parasitic indigenisation law has been scrapped and there is rule of law.

 

So Mugabe had made a big song and dance over the only two cheques he had managed to get for his ZimAsset economic recovery plan and now it turns out that the Chinese cheque was not even signed – otherwise Zimbabwe would be servicing that loan when it was clear it will never draw on it. The Russian cheque is possibly post-dated and unsigned too! In short Mugabe really has nothing in the ZimAsset begging bowl!

 

In the economy, Mugabe has met the toughest advisory of his 35 years in office. Mugabe was able to cheat or bamboozle the likes of Tsvangirai and Mrs Mujuru with relative ease. He was sure he would rig economic recovery with his ZimAsset plan by throwing the $27 billion at the gross mismanagement and rampant corruption and thus achieve the recovery without having to deal with these cancers. It is clear that, other than the two “for display purposes only” cheques Mugabe has failed to get any funding for his ZimAsset plan. ZimAsset plan is dead in the waste. The economic meltdown is squeezing harder than ever!

 

Mugabe has failed to rigged economic recovery and now he must allow the implementation of the democratic reforms, a necessary prerequisite to electing the competent government that will carry out the required economic reforms to end the economic meltdown.