The Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) has denied claims that former white farmers were paid $134 million in compensation by the government last year as claimed by Minister of Finance Patrick Chinamasa in the Budget Review. The CFU said that it was unaware of any payments, saying the only compensation it was aware of was made to Interfresh, which lost farms in the Mazowe area.
Ben Gilpin, acting director at Commercial Farmers Union of Zimbabwe (CFUZ) said:
We haven’t seen or heard of those payments from people whom we have been in contact with. We would need to check where those payments have gone.
Another farmer said:
This is most definitely not the case, Where he is coming from I have no idea.
Another official from the CFU said:
We got to hear that Interfresh was paid in the region of $44 million, but that was a while ago,
We have done some quick checks and it does not seem to be true that such an amount ($134 million) was paid last year.
More: VOA