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NewsDay

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‘Zim needs to strengthen multi-currency regime’

Business
Zimbabwe needs to strengthen the multi-currency regime through increased production instead of introducing bond notes, analysts have said.

Zimbabwe needs to strengthen the multi-currency regime through increased production instead of introducing bond notes, analysts have said.

BY KENNETH NYANGANI

Zimbabwe needs to re-open and resuscitate ailing industries and kick-start production to create more employment as the country is running out of production capacity, they added.

At a public lecture jointly organised by Alpha Media Holdings, Africa University and RBZ, stakeholders said some banks were no longer issuing US dollar notes, while others have run out of bond notes.

“Zimbabwe will come to a halt, we need to increase exports both in terms of volume and quality. Recently, I went to Chimanimani to do research together with the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries,” Africa University lecturer, Thomas Masese said.

“There is timber in (Chimanimani). They just cut logs and export them. There is no value addition. If you can make a table and export it, how much can your earn?”

Another Africa University lecturer, Solomon Mungure, said the country should not focus on bond notes, but instead on acquiring equipment to produce goods.

“If you go to India for a kidney transplant, you need around $20 000, but why should we not raise money to buy the machine that is needed and why are we continuing importing cars from Japan and not make them ourselves. We need resources,” he said.

RBZ’s international banking portfolio management deputy director, Ernest Matiza said people lacked trust in bond notes, which were introduced to boost exports.

“The bond notes were introduced not to solve the cash crisis, but as a bonus to protect exporters. We are telling people that we can still use the rand, we are being too sensitive about the bond note, after all, we need to go back and produce and produce and we can export more,” he said.

Confederation of Zimbabwe Retailers president, Danford Mutashu said retailers should embrace bond notes, but believes that more education was needed to teach people on the security features of the notes.

“On the issue of acceptability of the bond notes, some retailers were refusing the bond notes citing issues of security features. I think there was lack of education,” he said.

Last week, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) introduced bond notes under an export incentive facility guaranteed by the Africa Export Import Bank.