Zimbabwean Finance Minister Tendai Biti says he has not received any money from sales of the country's rough diamonds since January 2011, the Voice of the People reports.



In an interview to VoP, Biti was asked about a statement issued by President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party saying that the Finance Ministry had refused to raise civil servants' salaries despite receiving diamond proceeds. Biti denied this, saying that the money the party was referring to had been transferred to his ministry last year. "I have not received fresh diamond money since January 2011," he stated.



Biti is a supporter of the Diamond Act, proposed legislation that would increase the transparency of Zimbabwe's diamond industry by putting anti-smuggling mechanisms in place and setting up a state-run Diamond Commission.