Zimbabwe to Privatize Tobacco Company (fwd)

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

                        September 23, 1998
 Zimbabwe Agrees To Speed Up
 Privatization - Report

 Dow Jones Newswires

 HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP)--The government agreed to
 speed up its privatization program by promising to sell
 off 40 state-owned companies as quickly as possible, a
 state-controlled newspaper reported Wednesday.

 The Herald said the first of the companies, the
 Zimbabwe Reinsurance Corp., would be offered for sale
 to private shareholders immediately.

 It is fully owned by the government.

 Finance Minister Herbert Murerwa said the sale of state
 companies and the state's shareholdings in other firms
 was expected to raise 3.6 billion Zimbabwe dollars
 ($130 million) before the end of the year.

 He told The Herald that among state firms being sold
 were a finance house, a holding company with large
 construction interests, a tobacco company and parts of
 the state ironworks and steelmaker ZISCO.

 International lending institutions and Western donors
 have called for the speeding up privatization under
 market-led economic reforms adopted in 1992 after a
 decade of socialist economic policies.





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