Industry and Commerce Minister, Welshman Ncube, told The Zimbabwean in an interview that the government was still working on procedural arrangements to receive cash out of the SDRs. “We are yet to secure countries willing to convert the SDRs into cash,” Ncube said. The IMF in September last year advanced a US$510 million loan to Zimbabwe for the first time in a decade, despite the country still owing the IMF more than US$100 million in unpaid debts.
The IMF allocated Zimbabwe an equivalent of US$510 million in SDRs, as part of efforts to fight the effects of the global economic meltdown. The SDR is an IMF internal unit of account and a country’s allocation is based on the size of its IMF quota share, which is calculated according to the size of the economy, trade and reserves. To convert the SDRs into hard currency, a country has to find a buyer from within the IMF members.