Zimbabwe needs $1.6bn to lift crop output after El Nino induced drought

ZIMBABWE needs $1.64 billion to bolster crop production after a devastating drought increased food insecurity and prompted a state of disaster.

The southern African nation is targeting a more than fourfold increase in the annual output of key crops to 4.1 million metric tons, including 2.7 million metric tons of its staple corn crop, next season, a government policy document seen by Bloomberg and verified by the Ministry of Agriculture showed. It produced a record 2.8 million metric tons of corn in 2020-21.

The private sector is expected to contribute 60% to next season's financing requirement through contracts while the government will cover 37% and self-financed farmers will make up the remainder, the ministry said in the document. It didn't explain how the money would be raised.

Zimbabwe suffered its worst drought in more than four decades in the season just ended as the El Niño weather phenomenon curbed rainfall and scorched crops across the country and the wider southern African region.

That increased food insecurity, prompting President Emmerson Mnangagwa to declare a state of national disaster in April, a step also taken by a number of neighboring countries.

"The El Niño season affected the entire Southern African region, but Zimbabwe seemed to be the epicentre," the ministry said.

Still, the government may struggle to raise finance after years of economic and political turmoil and erratic policymaking drove away investors.

It's also virtually locked out of international debt markets and cannot get assistance from major multilateral lenders such as the World Bank because it hasn't paid its arrears on its foreign debt.

The country consumes 2.2 million tons of corn annually, with about 80% used for food and the remainder for livestock feed. Zimbabwe is seeking assistance from the United Nations' World Food Programme and its millers have also said they will need to import about 1.4 million tons to meet demand.

It has periodically battled to feed its people since former President Robert Mugabe backed the seizure of White-owned commercial farms for redistribution to Black subsistence farmers in 2000, a campaign that saw farmers and their workers driven off their land.

While that was meant to compensate for the dispossession of land from Black Zimbabweans during the colonial era, it resulted in the country ceding its role as a major corn exporter to the region.

The planting season that starts next month is expected to benefit from the La Niña weather phenomenon, which typically brings normal- or -above-normal rainfall.