The International Monetary Fund said today it had allocated a 510 million dollar loan to Zimbabwe, but finance minister Tendai Biti said the government cannot afford to take the loan, according to dpa. The allocation follows an agreement by the G20 group of the world's leading economies in April to increase to US$750 billion the IMFs support to economies stricken by the world recession. But Biti told German Press Agency dpa: "It's not a grant, its a loan. It attracts interest. "We would be contracting debt when our balance of payments and our debt burden is very fragile. We have less than US$2 million in import reserves. Our arrears account for 150 percent of gross domestic product. "There is no way we can take that (loan) up in the context of the arrears and the deficit. It would be very imprudent." The loan would have been the IMF's first payment to Zimbabwe since 1999.
