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Business Reporter
LISTED financial services group, CBZ Holdings, has delayed publishing financial results for the year ended December 31, 2019 as it is yet to reach an agreement on accounting of legacy debts with its external auditors.

In a notice to shareholders, CBZ Holdings said it was unable to publish its audited financial statements for the prior financial year on or before April 30, 2020.

“The company is yet to reach an agreement with its external auditors on the accounting for legacy debts and this has resulted in the delay in publication, of the financial statements,” it said.

The group has since advised that the pending financial statements will be published by no later than Monday next week.

“This is in line with the extension granted to the company by the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange,” it said. CBZ Bank, which is the country’s biggest bank by assets and deposits, early this year announced that it was issuing a US$50 million bond that will finance the 2019/20 agriculture season.

It is hoped that the bond instruments will finance the importation of farming inputs specifically for maize and soya bean as Government moves in to improve production of the two essential food crops.

The CBZ Bond will be under the commercial contract farming programme that is being spearheaded through the CBZ Agro Yield (Pvt) Limited.

In the past two decades, funding for agriculture has been a challenge especially for farmers who benefitted from the land redistribution programme as banks required loan applicants from the sector to provide collateral in the form of immovable assets to access funding.

There was still uncertainty on laws surrounding land tenure, which made it difficult for creditors to predict how long the farmers would be entitled to the allocated land.

Stakeholder consultations, however, saw the 99-year leases being amended to include a transferability and bankable element in order to improve access to funding for the sector.