Zimbabwe has raised a $193.3 million loan from South Africa’s Standard Bank, its Zimbabwean unit and Absa Group, to finance public hospitals and clinics, Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube said.
The Treasury through the Zimbabwe Debt Management Office negotiated the Export Credit insurance Corp of South Africa-backed sovereign loan, Ncube said in an emailed statement. The funds will be used to build five district hospitals and 22 health centers across Zimbabwe’s ten provinces, he said.
The project is due to start in June and be completed over the next three years, according to the finance minister. The deal indicates that “external banks are now extending lines of credit to Zimbabwe’s government, which reflects an improvement in the country’s sovereign credit risk profile,” he said.
The southern African nation has been locked out of international capital markets since defaulting on payments to the World Bank and other multilateral lenders more than two
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