Tsvangirai: Zimbabwe recovery could cost 5 billion dollars (Roundup)

Feb 20, 2009, 14:21 GMT

Harare - Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai held talks Friday with South African President Kgalema Motlanthe about the difficulty in putting his country's battered economy together again - a task he costed in the region of 5 billion dollars.

Tsvangirai and his finance minister, Tendai Biti, held talks with the South African leader at the presidential guesthouse in Cape Town about obtaining funding for Zimbabwe's recovery.

Following the meeting Motlanthe said his finance minister, Trevor Manuel, and Biti would sit down together to discuss 'how these challenges can best be dealt with.'

Motlanthe refused to say how much money Tsvangirai had asked for from South Africa, saying the finance ministers' meeting would provide a 'clearer picture.'

Tsvangirai did not give a figure for the country's short-term needs, but said Zimbabwe's medium to long-term needs could run into the 'billions of dollars. Maybe as high as five billion.'

South Africa's Business Day newspaper reported that Tsvangirai had come in search of a one-billion-dollar loan to be facilitated by South Africa.

Zimbabwe's cash-strapped new power-sharing government is in desperate need of funds to try to undo a decade of economic misrule under President Robert Mugabe. As the party that obtained the finance ministry, the task of kickstarting a turnaround has fallen to the MDC.

This week, Tsvangirai met his promise to pay the civil servants in hard currency, paying 100 dollars to each worker at an estimated cost of 30 million dollars.

Biti was evasive on where that money came from and said the government only has enough money for another month's salaries.