HARARE - Zimbabwe’s Agriculture Minister Joseph Made says the Harare government is considering enacting new legislation to force the country’s banks to finance black villagers resettled on land seized from whites.

Speaking to ZimOnline at the weekend, Made accused commercial banks of ganging up to sabotage President Robert Mugabe’s controversial land reforms by refusing to advance loans to blacks allocated land by the government.
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But a senior executive with one of the country’s biggest commercial banks described Made’s statements as uninformed, saying forcing banks to give out loans without checking the creditworthiness of recipients would have a serious destabilising impact on the banking sector.

The banker, who did not want to be named, said: “Banks do not segregate on the basis of colour or political party affiliation. In fact, black people head most of the banks.

“The problem is most of the new farmers are not creditworthy and any serious bank would not throw money down the hole. It will be a first for a government to tell banks whom to give money without following business principles.”

To prove his point, the banker cited the state-owned Agribank which almost collapsed after it was forced by the government to advance loans to black farmers without any rigorous checking on their ability to pay back. Many of the black farmers failed to repay the loans. - ZimOnline