RETAILERS have recorded an over 50% increase in the use of plastic money since the cash shortages surfaced asome months ago, the Confederation of Zimbabwe Retailers (CZR) has said.
BY MUNESU NYAKUDYA
CZR president, Denford Mutashu told journalists after meeting with Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa last week that the cash shortages had triggered an increase in the use of plastic money.
“In most retail shops, there is an uptake in the use of plastic money, the use of electronic cards rose from about 3% to about 55% in various retail shops,” he said, adding, “we are quite encouraged that we were given this special audience, where we were able to express our issues.”
Mutashu said the retail sector was ready for bond notes, which central bank governor, John Mangudya (pictured) said would be introduced in October.
The bond notes are coming via a 5% export incentive and the facility is guaranteed by Afreximbank. Mutashu said there were still problems with the country’s fuel sector, as it had limited point-of-sale machines.
“One of the challenges we have currently is the issue of our interaction with fuel players, because we have trucks that we need to use, but some fuel dealers are still refusing to receive plastic money and still demand cash, which is not readily available,” he said.
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Mutashu said Mnangagwa, who did not address journalists after the meeting, had promised to look into the issue. The CZR boss said his group was determined to promote local suppliers in order to improve capacity utilisation and economic growth.
“Cooking oil is still a challenge, but we spoke about it with Mangudya and he said we will address it. We want to request and call upon the financial services sector to expedite external payment for crude oil so that we don’t run out of cooking oil,” Mutashu said.
