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Business Writer

Commercial agriculture special purpose vehicle (SPV), Sahwira Agriculture (Pvt) Limited has been granted prescribed asset (PA) status by Treasury.

Locally, pension funds are required by law to invest at least 10 percent of their portfolio in prescribed assets.

Life and funeral assurance companies are required to invest 7,5 percent of the market value of the total adjusted assets in prescribed assets.

And short-term insurance companies are required to invest 5 percent of their funds in prescribed assets.

Sahwira Agriculture is a subsidiary of the Nyaradzo Group.

“Sahwira Agriculture has been established as a special purpose company backed by Nyaradzo Life Assurance Company as its anchor investor, with management oversight from Nyaradzo Asset Management.

“The company’s core activity is large-scale food crop production in various locations across Zimbabwe, with a particular focus on the cereal crops of maize and wheat and the leguminous crops of groundnuts, sugar beans and soya beans,” said chairman Philip Mataranyika in an investment memorandum. 

“Sahwira Agriculture operates a corporate farming model with centralised management and clustered farm operations across the country. This is a lean, yet efficient and flexible model that enhances the overall operations through scale efficiencies and cost optimisation.

“As Sahwira Agriculture, we envision progressively scaling our business through leasing of both private and state-owned agricultural land for crop production purposes.

“We see significant scope in optimised large-scale production in Zimbabwe and it is our intention to firmly position Sahwira Agriculture as a leading food crop producer with potential to expand along the value chain in the medium to long term.”

The SPV is offering two investment instruments. 

The first is a programme of 270-day Inflation Indexed Notes to be issued in tranches at a discounted price of 92 percent of face value per note, in order to raise up to the Zimbabwe dollar equivalent of US$8 million over a five-year period.

And the second is a programme of five year, 5 percent, participating preference shares to be issued in tranches at a Zimbabwe dollar price equivalent to US$100 per preference share in order to raise up to US$12 million or its equivalent in Zimbabwe dollars over a five-year period.

Sahwira Agriculture’s existing farm lease portfolio comprises of three farm clusters with an aggregate hectarage of 2 000 in Makoni District (Rusape-Nyazura), Zvimba District (Darwendale and Norton), respectively. 

“More farm leases are in the pipeline and will be added to the current portfolio,” the group has said. 

The SPV will enhance financing towards Zimbabwe’s agricultural sector.