The Deposit Protection Corporation (DPC) on Monday said it has no capacity to carry out bank surveillance as required by the law, hence it was not privy to the happenings at Genesis and Interfin.
DPC chief executive officer John Chikura said: “We didn’t know what was happening at Interfin, we were informed by newspapers.
“As far as the two banks — Genesis and Interfin were concerned — we read about them in the papers. Our system should be able to pay Interfin depositors $660 000 if they fail to recover from the curatorship.”
Presenting oral evidence before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Budget and Finance, Chikura said the corporation was yet to begin surveillance on banks to identify problems before banks collapsed.
“We share your concerns. It’s not that we don’t understand. The law has just come into effect and we are developing the system, while our guys have to be trained.
“This is why I am saying it’s a baptism of fire,” he said.
The new Deposit Protection Corporation Act was gazetted on March 16 2012 amending the functions of the Deposit Protection Corporation to enable it to do offsite surveillance, while onsite services will be covered by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe.
The new Act allows the corporation to receive information from banks and pick up on exposures if there were any.
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Chikura said apart from surveillance, the DPC board was yet to be appointed, making it difficult for the corporation to operationalise the surveillance system.
“The operationalisation of the board has not been done and the Act came in a few months ago,” he said.
“To us it is baptism of fire. Before you have a board of directors you have a problem.”
Quizzed by committee chairperson Paddy Zhanda whether the absence of the board interfered with policy matters, Chikura said the initial role of the DPC was to pay depositors’ funds, but the new law has come with the surveillance role.
