ZANU PF spokesperson, Christopher Mutsvangwa, yesterday betrayed panic in the ruling party over the “collapse” of the Zimbabwe Gold currency (ZWG), by calling on President Emmerson Mnangagwa to urgently issue a Statutory Instrument (SI) making the local unit the sole legal tender.
Government introduced ZWG in April this year to replace the Zimdollar that had been rendered worthless by inflation.
The ZWG has, however, lost at least 40% of its value.
It traded at ZWG13,50 to the United States dollar after its introduction in April and it is now trading at between ZWG25-ZWG28 on the black market.
This has pushed up prices of basic commodities with some service providers charging their goods exclusively in foreign currency to avoid losses.
Addressing journalists at a Press conference yesterday, Mutsvangwa said the ZWG had to be saved through an SI making it the sole currency of trade.
“We are having a situation where on one side, I have my US dollars and on the other side, the currency is not the same,” Mutsvangwa said.
“All these two currencies are mine. Then I cause inflation between the two currencies. I mean, what economics is that? What finance is that?
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“There are people who are trying to manipulate the system, because the US dollars in the system are not a gift of the American government. No American government writes US dollars for Zimbabwe.”
Mutsvangwa added: “So there’s an abuse of the system... but there’s a need, and this is not Zanu-PF, by the way, I’m speaking as a Zimbabwean.
“I just believe that the President’s inclination to say, let’s just put a statutory instrument and make ZWG the single currency of transaction is the best way to go, because it removes all the arbitrageurs.”
The ZWG is not the first currency to be introduced by authorities in recent years.
In 2009, Zimbabwe dumped the local currency after it was ravaged by hyper-inflation and adopted a multicurrency regime dominated by the United States dollar.
Mutsvangwa said by licensing Starlink Mnangagwa crushed corporate greed.
“There was a lot of gnashing of teeth when the President announced himself this licence. But by the way, that was also what Elon Musk wanted. He had been approached by several businesspeople to try to cut a deal for their corporations,” he said.
Zanu PF benefactor, Wicknell Chivayo, was initially named as the sole distributor of Starlink kits.
On Saturday, Starlink said it would sell its kits directly to consumers, a move that effectively sidelined Chivayo and other tenderpreneurs.
