HARARE – World Bank boss Robert Zoellick said on Tuesday the bank was concerned about delays by Zimbabwe’s three governing parties to conclude outstanding issues from their power sharing agreement, especially the dispute around the appointment of the country’s central bank governor.

“There are new challenges to do with the appointment of the central bank governor there that the new government has to look at,” Zoellick told journalists in Harare via video conference from Adds Ababa, Ethiopia.

Zimbabwe’s coalition partners who formed a power-sharing government last February have failed to resolve a raft of outstanding issues – among them President Robert Mugabe’s refusal to rescind his unilateral appointment of two top allies Gideon Gono and Johannes Tomana to head the central bank and the attorney general’s office respectively.

Gono is accused of exacerbating Zimbabwe’s economic crisis by ceaselessly printing money to fund Mugabe’s political programmes.

Analysts say Gono’s removal from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe is critical to show Western donors that Harare is serious with reforming the economy that was ravaged by hyperinflation chiefly blamed on the governor’s money printing policies.

Zoellick said the World Bank was working with other donors to see how they can assist Zimbabwe but said that raising support for Zimbabwe depended on how donors perceived the Harare administration.  

“We have a procedure that we have to do, we are working with donors and (any move that we will make on Zimbabwe) will depend on whether donors think the government is ready,” Zoellick said.

Harare is sitting on a US$6 billion plus interest foreign debt of which US$1.3 billion is owed to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB) and the ADB.

Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s unity government has done well to stabilise Zimbabwe’s economy and end inflation that was estimated at more than a trillion percent at the height of the country’s economic meltdown last year.

But failure by the former foes to resolve outstanding power-sharing issues and to quicken the pace of political reforms has hurt the Harare government’s reconstruction programme with major Western nations refusing to release significant financial support until the coalition agreement is fully implemented. – ZimOnline