HARARE, April 21: Zimbabwe received farm machinery worth $25 million from China on Saturday in a deal to replace equipment damaged when President Robert Mugabe's government seized white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks.

Western powers have imposed economic sanctions on Zimbabwe for what they say are wide scale rights abuses by Mugabe's administration, forcing the 80-year-old leader to look eastward, especially to China, for aid and investment.

The equipment, which included 424 tractors and 50 trucks, was part of a bid to replace machinery damaged in disturbances when the state seized white-owned farms, the government said.

Agricultural production has fallen drastically -- deepening the troubled southern African country's economic crisis -- largely due to lack of equipment, funding and technical expertise among the newly resettled farmers.

Speaking at a ceremony to receive the machinery, which was attended by a Chinese delegation led by senior Communist Party official Jia Qinglin, Mugabe said the country's agriculture industry was now ready to “take off”.

“This is the thrust of assistance by the People's Republic of China to the Republic of Zimbabwe ... for us to sustain politically our sovereign right to be ourselves,” Mugabe said.

Critics blame Mugabe's controversial policies for Zimbabwe's deep economic crisis, shown by the highest inflation rate in the world -- at over 1,700 per cent -- 80 per cent unemployment and shortages of food, foreign currency and fuel.

Zimbabwe's minister of Agricultural Engineering and Mechanisation, Joseph Made, said the farm implements were purchased under a $58 million loan from the Chinese government.

The southern African country will export tobacco in return.

“The total loan facility granted by the People's Republic of China is $58 million. These items cost $25 million as part of the first phase,” Made said.

Zimbabwe will deliver 30 million kg of tobacco to China, with as much as 80 million kg of the crop to be exported by the fifth year, Made added.

Zimbabwe has seen a drastic reduction in tobacco output, down from a peak of over 200 million kg in 2000, to about 55 million kg last year.

Mugabe has denied his policies are to blame for the country's economic crisis and accuses the West of sabotaging the economy as punishment for his government's land reform policy.

—Reuters