Zimbabwe building US$500m El Niño protection fund, says Guvamatanga

The government is building a US$500 million El Niño protection fund made up of US$250 million in cash and US$250 million worth of grain reserves, a senior official has said.

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, George Guvamatanga, said the government had already started buying grain from local farmers and had accumulated more than 200,000 metric tonnes of maize in its strategic grain reserves.

Speaking during an online media briefing on the sidelines of the 2026 IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings in Bangkok, Thailand, on Wednesday, 14 October, Guvamatanga said buying locally was the government’s preferred option.

The strategy, he said, will strengthen the country’s food-security buffer while supporting the economy by providing a market for local farmers.

“We are not planning to start buying maize next year. We have already started buying maize, and I think we have already got over 200,000 tonnes of maize in our strategic grain reserve,” he said.

“We are buying maize from local farmers, which is actually our preference, rather than importation. We are hoping that we should be able to gather enough strategic reserves of grain from local farmers and support the economy.”

He said with current stocks, there may be no need to import maize to support the reserves.

Guvamatanga said the US$500 million fund will have two components – US$250 million in readily available cash to finance interventions, and US$250 million in grain reserves, including maize, small grains and wheat.

“We have been buying grain, small grains, maize, and wheat from local farmers and we expect by the end of the year that we will be sitting on a total El Niño protection fund of half a billion,” he said.

“But I need to be very clear here that of the half a billion, US$250 million is cash and US$250 million will be grain, so that will give us a very strong start into the year, but we will also make further provisions in the 2027 budget for further funding to support the adverse impact that will be brought forward by the El Niño phenomenon.”

He added: “We think we are very much prepared this time around to deal with it depending on how severe it will be.”

El Niño is a naturally recurring warming of surface waters across the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. It typically develops every two to seven years and can last nine to 12 months.

The current event has been described as a “super El Niño” because sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific have risen by 2°C or more above average, with some daily anomalies spiking past 3°C.