The future of Zimbabwe’s central bank is in doubt because of a lack of funds from the Treasury, an official said.

The “Treasury is seriously under-funding the central bank to levels that are now threatening the very existence” of the bank, its spokesman, Kumbirai Nhongo, said in an e-mailed statement from Harare today. He didn’t give details, saying “it would be inappropriate for us to go into the operational issues that are under the consideration” of the parties in the power- sharing government.

Nhongo’s comments are the latest in a dispute over control of the bank between Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change and President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front.

Central bank Governor Gideon Gono, who is accused by the MDC of being a Zanu-PF loyalist, said in December that the bank lacked the funds to be Zimbabwe’s “lender of last resort.” The MDC has demanded he be fired from the post.

The Treasury is under the direct control of Finance Minister Tendai Biti, the MDC’s general secretary, who has accused Gono of financing “quasi-fiscal” policies and mismanagement that led to inflation of 500 billion percent in January 2009. Biti didn’t respond to calls seeking comment today. An official who declined to be identified said Biti was unavailable.

Inflation was reduced to near zero percent in February, when the MDC and Zanu-PF formed the power-sharing government. While the power-sharing agreement hasn’t been fully implemented, Zimbabwe’s economy grew by 4.7 percent in 2009, ending a decade of economic crises.

By Bloomberg