RESERVE Bank Governor John Mangudya yesterday told Parliament that he was optimistic that the banking sector will soon come out of the woods, adding that the liquidity challenges currently blighting the sector were caused by the negative perceptions created by people who failed to repay their loans.
VENERANDA LANGA SENIOR PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER
He told the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Finance and Economic Development that banks were in a sound state and it was only those people who took loans in 2009 and failed to re-pay them who undermined the appetite for lending and caused hitches in the circulation of cash in the banking sector.
“We are moving back to basics whereby we just do our core functions as an institution, and the liquidity conditions in this country are tight, but to us it is a symptom of negative perceptions which have affected confidence levels,” Mangudya said.
Mangudya said the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe was planning to establish a National Credit Reference Bureau which would enable banks to detect bad debtors.
He also said the RBZ Debt Assumption Bill which settles the $1,35 billion RBZ debt was gazetted and is now before Parliament, adding it would help the RBZ to start on a clean slate and go back to basics.
“We have made progress in moving the government bank accounts from CBZ to RBZ and between now and July 15 we should be able to move the accounts. We are also mobilising resources so that at least we are able to assist banks in need of funding. We want to protect depositors’ funds so that they are used for those purposes and we are fund-raising to ensure we are lenders of last resort.
“The country should continue with the multi-currency system. We cannot decrease capital requirements of $25 million for banks and we want to put more emphasis on quality of assets of a bank and that is why we are establishing a credit reference bureau. We also believe Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa is working on demonitisation of the Zimbabwean dollar,” he said.
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Mangudya said the use of the recently introduced multi-currencies like the Chinese yen, Indian rupee and Japanese currency had been very low with few bank accounts opened in those currencies although it was permissible.
