Trimetallic Currency System Can Work As Legal Tender In Zimbabwe – Barring A Few Teething Problems

Gold is probably the oldest and strongest commodity-based currency that has direct intrinsic value By Colls Ndlovu BEFORE the Zimbabwe Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ)’s Monetary Policy Committee met on 24 June 2022 to deliberate on macro-economic and financial developments in the economy and resolved to introduce gold coins into the market for people and investors to use it as a store of value - I had written an article proposing trimetallism as an antidote to the country’s currency crisis. This article, which was supposed to be published last week, proposed that Zimbabwe should consider adopting the trimetallic currency monetary system as an antidote to its seemingly endless currency crisis. The trimetallic monetary system comprises of gold, platinum and silver operating as concurrent currencies within the economy. This effectively means these have to be jointly and severally approved as legal tender. Zimbabwe has had its fair share of unprecedented levels of hyperinflation, especially during the period up to 2008. Thereafter, it adopted a multicurrency system as a direct reaction to the then deleterious levels of hyperinflation that peaked at a horrendous unprecedented level of 89 700 000 000 000 000 000 000% (that is to say, 89.7