Zimbabwe's central bank said it planned to take punitive measures against foreign-owned banks that resist demands to transfer majority shareholding to local blacks under a controversial empowerment policy.
President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF is pushing plans to force all foreign companies to cede controlling stakes to blacks, a policy which his rival Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has denounced as "looting and plunder" by a greedy elite.
Gono did not say whether foreign banks had submitted plans to comply with empowerment laws but urged them to do so.
Gono was unavailable for comment on Sunday. He gave no details of timeframes or what the RBZ's punitive measures would be, but appeared to suggest licences could be withdrawn.
Gono said Zimbabwe's banking sector was generally in a healthy state but could be threatened by a loss of staff at the central bank, where hundreds have applied to leave because of depleted resources, low wages and poor working conditions.
Foreign-owned banks in Zimbabwe include Barclays Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and Stanbic Zimbabwe - a subsidiary of South Africa's Standard Bank.
Comments
Comments are closed.