Since the collapse of the Zimbabwe dollar in 2009 due to spiralling,
uncontrollable inflation, the country uses several foreign currencies
in everyday trade - mainly the US dollar and the South African rand -
but the physical lack of coins has created problems when it comes to giving change.
The dollarization of Zimbabwe’s economy was, I believed, the single
most important policy introduced by the Government of National Unity,
that awkward political arrangement which forced Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF
to work together with the main factions of the opposition Movement for
Democratic Change. Biti is a member of Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC faction,
and I thought that it was him and his party which provided the impetus
for the change (I’m not the only one. This perception is widely held,
and even seems to be supported in academic research, such as this infamous Cato Institute report and this paper from the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa.
An annoyed reader in the comments section had a different version of
events. Writing only under the name Batanai, the reader wrote: “If you
like dollarization (which you falsely attributed to Biti), then you
should love Chinamasa! On 29 January 2009, while acting minister of
finance, Chinamasa introduced dollarization into the Zimbabwe economy.”
Fearing a return of the Zimbabwe dollar, the reserve bank introduced bond coins. The coins were initially met
with resistance from street traders and commuter bus drivers, who
refused to accept them. The coins are now slowly gaining acceptance, but
beyond the main cities, reports suggest distribution still remains
poor.
With all this evolution of currency in Zimbabwe the question that rises in peoples minds is where the economy is headed to currency is unstable and industries are closing on a daily basis.
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