Mutapa plans bond issuance

CLOUDINE MATOLA

The Mutapa Investment Fund is finalising plans to launch the Mutapa Bond, a new investment vehicle aimed at attracting both large and smaller institutional funds to invest in its expansive portfolio of State-linked enterprises, Business Times has learnt.

The proposed bond is expected to unlock long-term capital for infrastructure development while offering pension funds and other smaller players access to real, inflation-hedged assets—helping bridge the gap in Zimbabwe’s short-term focused financial market.

“We are actually thinking of putting a Mutapa Bond through. So we are exploring that opportunity,” said Simba Chinyemba, the Fund’s Chief Investment Officer.

“That allows smaller funds to be able to invest into the Mutapa portfolio, because that bond’s main purpose would be specifically to invest in the companies that Mutapa currently runs.”

Chinyemba explained that the bond would function as a proxy share in the Fund’s diverse asset base, giving investors a unique path to long-term value creation.

“Effectively, a Mutapa Bond is like putting money into a Mutapa share in a different way,” he said.

“We already have a very diverse group of assets. And a lot of the assets that we have, they are real assets. So they also provide that long-term nature that pension funds are looking for.”

He noted that most of the Fund’s investment pipeline is infrastructure-driven—projects that typically demand long-dated capital.

“When you look at the projects that we have, most of them are often infrastructure-led. Now, infrastructure, as we all know, is pretty long-dated.”

Chinyemba warned that Zimbabwe’s financial sector is misaligned with its infrastructure ambitions, relying heavily on short-term bank financing for projects that require long-term funding.

“The biggest problem that we currently have in Zimbabwe is everybody is using banking finance to fund long-term infrastructure projects. And I think at some point, the chickens are going to come home to roost—if they are not already,” he said.

With four and a half years remaining before the country’s Vision 2030 deadline, he stressed the urgency of mobilising patient capital.

The Mutapa Investment Fund—formerly the Sovereign Wealth Fund of Zimbabwe—oversees 66 State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) across sectors such as mining, energy, financial services, infrastructure, and agriculture.

Chinyemba said many of these SOEs are currently implementing turnaround strategies, which require significant capital inflows.

“To be honest, at the moment, because of the turnaround state of a lot of our companies, our ticket sizes are very big,” he said.

While Mutapa has not yet accessed capital from the domestic pension industry, Chinyemba confirmed that the Fund is preparing to approach them.

“We haven’t raised funds from the pension fund industry yet, but we will probably be coming to you shortly.”

He also revealed that the Fund raised more than US$350 million in the first half of 2025 alone to address capital needs across its portfolio.

“In the first half of the year, we have raised just over US$350m that we have allocated towards a lot of the capital needs within these companies. So, to a certain extent, we were starting off with looking for live funds,” he said.

The Mutapa Bond is expected to become a cornerstone of the Fund’s domestic mobilisation strategy—broadening access for smaller investors while fuelling Zimbabwe’s infrastructure-led development agenda.