Why no one’s buying the new Zimbabwean dollar

IN late 2016, the government introduced ‘bond notes’, a kind of bearer cheque designed to address a chronic shortage of physical United States dollars in the country.

It was hard to fault the logic of Zimbabwe’s Finance minister Mthuli Ncube, during the shock introduction of the new Zimbabwean dollar on Monday, when he said: “It means anyone who wants to buy goods or shop or pay for services, within the borders of Zimbabwe, ought to go to a bank or a bureau de change or some other institution to change their foreign currency into domestic currency and to spend that whichever way they wish to spend. That’s what normal countries do.”

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