Zimbabwe wants to come in from the cold

It is aIMFGDPUS- revealing journey from Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport to downtown Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital. A new terminal is all but empty. On Airport Road the first billboard, commissioned by a Belarusian agriculture firm, features a photo of a red tractor and a welcome for Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus’s president (pictured). Earlier this year this became one of the few non-African heads of state to visit the isolated country.Mr Lukashenko is not the only recent visitor, however. On February 23rd Zimbabwe’s government welcomed a group of mostly Western and multilateral creditors to discuss its roughly $17.6bn of external debts. Until these are restructured the country cannot get an loan and will remain largely locked out of international capital markets, as it has been since it began defaulting in 1999. That was the start of a decade of economic madness, invasions of white-owned farms and hyperinflation, complete with paper notes each worth 100trn Zimbabwe dollars. Real per person fell by a half in dollar terms; today it is still lower than it was at independence in 1980 (see chart).