HARARE (AFP) - An IMF team will visit Harare next month for an assessment mission that could lead to the expulsion of debt-ridden Zimbabwe from the global lending body, officials said Wednesday.

Although no exact date has been set, officials said that a delegation would embark on a visit early next month.

"The IMF delegation will be in Zimbabwe in early December," International Monetary Fund press officer Gita Bhatt told AFP.

An official at Zimbabwe's central bank, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the team was expected on December 5 for an 11-day assignment.

The fund's mission comes after the World Bank's lending arm demanded that President Robert Mugabe's government take strict measures to put the blighted economy of the former regional breadbasket back on the rails.

Zimbabwe, which narrowly averted expulsion from the IMF last September for debt arrears of 295 million dollars (229 million euros) through a surprise payment of 120 million dollars, still owes the international lender 125 million dollars, Bhatt said.

The delegation will compile a report to be used by the IMF board to decide Harare's fate when it meets in Washington in February to review the overdue debt payments.

Zimbabwe is laboring under record inflation of more than 1,000 percent, spiraling unemployment and an acute shortage of food and essential goods blamed partly on controversial land reforms launched by the state.

If expelled, Zimbabwe would become only the second country after the former Czechoslovakia to be kicked out from the IMF for debt arrears.

Zimbabwe tried to wrangle a bail-out loan from its powerful neighbor South Africa, the continent's economic powerhouse, but it never materialized since Pretoria hinted that Harare would have to undertake political reforms.

The IMF meanwhile last year probed the surprise payback of part of the loan arrears dating back to 2001 despite Zimbabwe's Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono's claims that it came from "free funds" and export earnings.

Given the country's dire economic straits, the payment prompted speculation and suspicion as to its source, with economists adding that Zimbabwe could ill-afford afford to spare hard currency due to its current crippling shortage.

Independent economist James Johwa said the IMF team would not see any change in the economic scenario. "Almost all the sectors of the economy are not performing. The problems can be traced back to land reform program which caused a major dislocation of linkages which were there in the economy."

Earlier this month, a senior IMF official described Zimbabwe as a dark spot in sub-Saharan Africa, which is otherwise set for higher economic growth next year.

Godfrey Chikowore, a lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe, said Harare was in the doghouse with the IMF as Western nations were pressuring it to punish Harare for seizing white-owned farms and giving them out to landless blacks.

"The Bretton Woods institutions are being used by the great powers to arm-twist smaller nations whose development policies may not be consistent with the neo-liberal paradigm," he said. "This is where actually the discontent relationship of Zimbabwe and the IMF emanates."

Zimbabwe's fast-track land reforms which saw the often violent seizure of some 4,000 white-owned farms led to a slump in agricultural output as many of the new beneficiaries lacked the skills and equipment to farm.