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By Nyasha Chingono
HARARE (Reuters) - The Zimbabwean government will this month pay an initial $20 million to foreign white and local Black farmers who lost land in farm invasions under former leader Robert Mugabe at the turn of the century, the finance minister said on Friday.
The spending was allocated in the 2024 budget as part of a series of measures to restore the country's once-thriving farming sector and help launch a long promised economic revival.
Agriculture collapsed when Mugabe oversaw the seizure of highly productive farms in 2000. Most were owned by Zimbabwean white commercial farmers after colonialists forcibly took them from Blacks early in the 20th century.
But foreign white farmers and some Black Zimbabweans also lost property in the seizures a quarter of a century ago, many of them spontaneous, unorganised and largely benefiting those with links to the ruling Zanu-PF party.
The victims being compensated include foreign farmers from Belgium, Germany and other countries, and 400 Black Zimbabweans, Mthuli Ncube said.
A separate and much larger $3.5 billion scheme for 4,000 white Zimbabwean farmers was announced in 2020, but the money has not been forthcoming owing to Zimbabwe's financial woes.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who replaced Mugabe in a 2017 coup, has sought to engage Western governments to restore ties, resolve Zimbabwe's huge foreign debt and revive its economy - although last year's elections, deemed not free and fair by observers, did little to restore potential donor confidence.
"The dialogue process is working and will help us in clearing our arrears eventually," Ncube said.
Zimbabwe has been locked out of the global financial system for more than two decades after defaulting on have also deterred assistance from donors.
The country is seeking an International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff monitored programme as a first step towards debt relief, and Ncube said an IMF team will visit Harare in the next two weeks.
"A staff monitored IMF programme ... is necessary to help us clear our debt arrears, which are an albatross around our economy," Ncube said.
Zimbabwe's total foreign debt stock is $12 billion owed to the World Bank, AfDB, 16 Paris Club members and other private funders.
(Reporting by Nyasha Chingono; Editing by Tim Cocks, William Maclean)
