THE government is engaged in intricate negotiations with the Development Bank of South Africa (DBSA) for the provision of between $450 and $700 million to bankroll the rehabilitation of the National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) which has been laid low by a myriad of problems, top among them dilapidated machinery and lack of capital, a Cabinet minister said yesterday. Njabulo Ncube Deputy Editor
Briefing the Matabeleland business community and other stakeholders in the aftermath of President Robert Mugabe’s visit to China at a breakfast meeting organised by Chronicle.
Transport and Infrastructural development minister Obert Mpofu said he was hopeful the mega deal with DBSA would be signed soon.
The transaction, seen as the panacea to NRZ’s nagging operational woes which have seen workers at the parastatal going for months without their salaries, would go towards the funding of a railway track, signalling system and rolling stock.
“Discussions are still going on and we are hopeful that we will close the transaction soon,” Mpofu said.
He revealed that in China there was a huge interest by potential investors to pump money into NRZ.
“But we want to take the current negotiations with DBSA which we feel are progressing well, to their logical conclusion.”
Mpofu, however, was quick to add that the deal with DBSA would not stop the government from “doing other things outside the current scope of negotiations”.
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Ultimately, he added, the revival of the NRZ would certainly lead to the revival of a considerable part of Bulawayo’s industrial activity “because a lot of downstream activities are dependent on the NRZ operations”.
“We are aware that part of the challenges impending industrial regeneration is the state of NRZ, but this will soon be a thing of the past,” he said.
During a question and answer session, Mpofu took a swipe at NRZ employees for staging protests over outstanding salaries at a time the government was in delicate negotiations with DBSA to revive the parastatal, saying the incident was a great embarrassment to the government.
“You don’t milk a dead cow, but a live one. The NRZ is dead, we want to revive the NRZ so that we can then milk it,” he retorted.
Experts indicate the paraststal requires about $1,9 billion in the long-term plan to be fully revitalised and transformed.
In the short term, according to the same experts, the NRZ would need $460 million to restore the infrastructure and equipment to acceptable level.
