(Bloomberg) -- Zimbabwe's financial position is still "very trying" and diamond sales this year will not ease pressure on the budget, Finance Minister Tendai Biti said.

Foreign assistance to rebuild the southern African country's economy remains low, leaving the government no room to spend more on new projects, Biti said today in a telephone interview from the capital, Harare.

"It will remain a cash budget because we have no money for anything else," he said. "Diamonds have proved they're not Zimbabwe's El Dorado, raising only $56 million. We are not printing money and the situation remains very, very trying."

Zimbabwe appealed for help to recover from a decade-long recession after the Movement for Democratic Change formed a power-sharing government with President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe Africa National Union-Patriotic Front in February last year. With Mugabe still in power, the accord has failed to allay investor and foreign government concerns.

International help is "far less than we hoped," Biti said. Since 2009, the government has been spending "only what it earns and eating only what it kills" to avoid taking on debt, he said.

The government has started talking to businesses and industries about next year's budget, to be presented in December, Biti said. The government's share of money earned from diamond sales will contribute to the annual budget.

The Kimberley Process, which monitors sales of so-called conflict diamonds, allowed the country to sell 900,000 carats of gems from the area on Aug. 11. Zimbabwe's military and police have been criticized for human-rights abuses in the Marange diamond fields, an area also known as Chiadzwa.