Staff ReporterHarare – Zimbabwe’s finance minister Patrick Chinamasa has reportedly denied reports that the country’s surrogate currency – the bond motes – would be phased out soon.
The state-owned Herald newspaper quoted Chinamasa as saying that the controversial bond notes were not going anywhere until the southern African country had its own currency.
The minister said that there were macroeconomic fundamentals that the treasury was working on before the surrogate currency could be discontinued.
“We need to address the budget deficit, we need to address the issues of exports and we need to build foreign currency reserves of at least three months, at the moment we are at 0.7 months. This is why we are coming up with all these proposal or incentives to incentivise production so I just want to plead with you, please let’s look at the positive side, let’s not dwell on the negative, let’s not be driven by falsehoods that are peddled through social media. You are intelligent enough to distinguish between an obvious falsehood and that which may have credibility,” Chinamasa was quoted as saying.
The southern African country adopted the use of multiple currencies in 2009 after its currency had been rendered worthless by hyperinflation.
The US dollar had been the main transacting currency but it has been in short supply since 2015 due to low exports and externalization.
This led to the introduction of a surrogate currency in November 2016 to ease chronic shortages of US dollars, and to encourage exporters who earn the country foreign currency.
