Could The Zimbabwe Dollar Be Headed From Whence It Came From

Reluctance is a stark demonstration of the government’s failure to win confidence in the Zimbabwe dollar By Ray Ndlovu When Zimbabwean businessman Nigel Chanakira asked 100 CEOs at a seminar in Harare on January 27 if they were willing to use the local currency, only one raised his hand. That reluctance is a stark demonstration of the government’s failure to win confidence in the Zimbabwe dollar, after finance minister Mthuli Ncube had staked the stagnating economy’s recovery on its reintroduction. For the second time in two decades, Zimbabweans are abandoning their local currency. At restaurants, a simple request for “the rate” sees one’s bill halved if it is met in hard currency, and supermarkets openly offer discounts for goods purchased in US dollars. The government paid public workers their Christmas bonuses in dollars, and the revenue service collects a third of its income in greenbacks. “We can’t deny the reality,” Chanakira, the founder and former CEO of now closed bank Kingdom Financial Holdings, said in an interview.