FINANCE Minister Tendai Biti on Tuesday said he had engaged Indigenisation Minister Saviour Kasukuwere to save foreign-owned banks from indiscriminate indigenisation.
The move appeared to support an earlier rebuke of Kasukuwere by Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor, Gideon Gono, who told Kasukuwere to stay off the financial sector after he issued a warning against three prominent foreign-owned banks to capitulate to indigenisation demands or risk losing their licences.
The central bank has oversight over the banking industry, with the Ministry of Finance playing a significant role in their licensing through the Registrar of Banks.
Standard Chartered Bank, Barclays Bank Zimbabwe and Stanbic Bank were last week served with ultimatums by Kasukuwere to comply with an indigenisation law compelling foreign-owned firms to cede 51 percent of their local shareholding to black Zimbabweans.
The banks were among several mining firms that included Mimosa, Zim-plats, Duration Gold, Murowa Diamonds, Pan American Mining and Blanket Gold as well as other non-mining firms like British American Tobacco and Swiss firm Nestlé.
Biti said his ministry was negotiating with Kasukuwere to set specific empowerment thresholds for the fragile banking sector.
"As the Ministry of Finance, we are consulting with (the foreign-owned) banks, Standard Chartered, Stanbic and Barclays. We have made submissions to the Ministry of Indigenisation on agreement of a threshold. We have not agreed on the threshold (yet)," said Biti.
"I know certain banks have already submitted their plans. We will look at them closely so that we can come up with one united position," Biti said.
"One thing that we have made clear to the Minister of Indigenisation is that banks are different from mines. Mines sit on capital. Banks are middleman.
"They are conveyors of capital. A bank is as good as its deposit base so naturally a different approach has to be taken but we are in negotiations with Minister Kasukuwere and once we agree, a new threshold will be gazetted," said Biti.
A special committee appointed by Kasukuwere last year recommended that local shareholding in banks should be restricted to at least 40 percent because the "financial services sector is the most integrated sector in respect of the inter-linkages with an individual country's economy and the global economy".
The committee's recommendations were rejected by Kasukuwere and also faced opposition from the Bankers Association of Zimbabwe, which in its submissions to the committee argued that the banking sector "was already indigenised" because 85 percent of banks were owned by locals.
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