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Harare Bureau

The long-trumpeted plans by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) to establish an office in Zimbabwe’s Newlands area have fruited, with the bank inviting expressions of interests from contractors to kick start construction works at the allocated site.

In 2017, the regional bank received title for 1,2 hectares of prime commercial land for the development of   the bank’s Southern African regional offices.

The construction of regional offices and other trade facilities, part of a series of interventions, will mark the bank’s inaugural step in the purported development of African Trade Centres. 

Zimbabwe will top as the first beneficiary of such a concept.

Afreximbank is a Pan-African multilateral financial institution that is head-quartered in Cairo, Egypt. 

It was established to provide financing solutions and development of intra and extra-African trade. 

For long the Bank has been supporting Zimbabwe’s economic projects through a series of facilities.

Said Afreximbank; “The bank intends to construct its Southern Africa Regional Office and Trade Centre on a 12 000 square metre plot of land in the Newlands area in Harare, Zimbabwe.

“The 12 000 square metre iconic mixed-use business complex shall provide an integrated one-stop-shop for trade facilitation and information services and trade finance, and offer a range of facilities: corporate office space, conference and exhibition centre, innovation and incubation hub, knowledge centre hotel and retail and other facilities.

“The bank thereby invites expressions of interest from reputable, experienced and suitably qualified contractors to carry out the building works.”

The establishment of an office in Zimbabwe will be a major boost for the country given that Afreximbank, as a trusted development partner has been supporting the country’s economy with a number of facilities that include lines of credit.

At the onset of the Second Republic the bank, through its president Dr Benedict Oramah, pledged a number of proposals to accelerate Zimbabwe’s economic recovery, more through supporting the engagement and re-engagement drive and in reviving investor confidence.  

Since then, in December 2017 the bank pledged to finalise a facility of US$600 million line of credit to finance trade and trade related projects. 

Of crucial significance was the bank’s pledge to process funded and unfunded facilities that amounted to between $1 million and $1,5 billion, facilities that were largely directed at capacitating the new Government to attract foreign direct investment into vital sectors of the economy.

Further, the bank pledged to provide advisory services in the Government’s privatisation of state owned enterprises, among them TelOne and NRZ.

The bank also assisted the country with a $1,5 million facility to support Tropical Cyclone Idai relief efforts after the disaster ravaged the country’s eastern provinces during the 2018- 2019 farming season.

The bank has ever been Zimbabwe’s valuable asset at difficult times and contributed immensely in efforts by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development to calibrate the fiscal and monetary outlook of the country. 

In 2018, Finance and Economic Development Minister Mthuli Ncube had discussions with Afreximbank which then pledged to offer a facility that would guarantee 1:1 convertibility of the RTGS balances into US dollars. 

Although not much information has been given on how this deal panned out, the bank has reportedly continued to churn out a series of funding facilities to the country.