RBZ, banks in 99 year lease pact 

Source: RBZ, banks in 99 year lease pact | The Financial Gazette

By Staff Reporter

RESETTLED farmers armed with 99 year land leases, which had over the years been turned down by financial institutions, can now use them to access loans, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor, John Mangudya disclosed last Wednesday.

He said banks had finally agreed to accept the document as security for loans to fund agriculture.
Presenting his 2018 Monetary Policy Statement yesterday, Mangudya said this was part of efforts to transform the agricultural sector into “viable business proposition”.

He said government had improved the lease document to make it “transferable and bankable”. “In line with the current economic dispensation’s aspiration to transform agriculture into a viable business proposition and taking into account the significant improvements made by government on the 99 year leases to enhance the security of tenure of the lease and making it bankable and transferrable, the bank has agreed with banking institutions for them to accept the 99 years leases as security
for accessing credit from financial institutions in
line with the provisions of the leases,” said Mangudya.

He added: “We are very happy. It’s about confidence. The major issue with most banks was with the security of tenure. In the old document there was a problem but we have improved that in the new document. Now, in the new document, we included the transferability and bankability aspects. We are very happy with the land leases.”

In the early 2000s, former president Robert Mugabe’s administration embarked on a chaotic land reform programme to address colonial land imbalances.

The move resulted in more than 4 000 farmers being forcibly evicted from their land.
This led to western sanctions on Zimbabwe, a situation which compounded an economic crisis that had worsened since the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and African Development Bank suspended aid in 1999, after Zimbabwe defaulted on debts.