WHILE a lot has been said about the issue of the proposed bond notes, what economists and analysts are missing is their impact on international trade. The simplistic view being taken is that these are domestic measures to counter shortages of bank notes in the domestic market, but our banking system, especially electronic banking system, is interconnected with the global system.
By I Mabhande,Our Reader
By printing bond notes and feeding them into the banking system and disguising them as genuinely earned US dollar amounts, the country may find itself cut off from the international financial transacting system for faking money that the country doesn’t have.
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor, John Mangudya has said that the bond notes, when deposited into a bank account, will not just be equivalent to the US dollar, but will be as good as the US dollar itself. No separate accounts are going to be opened.
What this simply means is that if I receive 1 000 bond notes and bank this amount into my US dollar account, I can legally claim to have banked US$1 000! I can then demand payment of this amount in US dollars whether in this country or outside the country since the US dollar is an international currency.
The problem comes that while country A is working to earn $1 000, in Zimbabwe we are simply printing bond paper, bank it in our banking system and then claim that the paper is actually US dollars.
We are not earning our foreign currency, but simply printing paper and feeding it into the banking system as foreign currency.
Once this is noticed by the international community, this, I’m sure, is going to be the biggest financial scandal in world history and this is bound to attract unparalleled punitive measures from the international community, including complete isolation of the country from the international electronic money transfer system.
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This is a scandal that would finally bury Zimbabwe’s economy in a matter of days. Foreign suppliers will simply refuse to be paid electronically and this will effectively shut Zimbabwe from international trade.
