AFTER all the noise that has accompanied the government’s continued talk on mono-currency implementation timelines, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) appears to have finally heeded long-standing warnings.
The central bank has now indicated that it has shifted its mono-currency transition plan from a fixed deadline to a conditions-based approach, meaning any changeover will only happen once strict economic benchmarks are met.
This emerged from discussions last Friday between International Monetary Fund and Treasury officials, with RBZ governor John Mushayavanhu emphasising that the central bank will only move once specific “conditions precedent” are satisfied, including maintaining three to six months of import cover.
This should, indeed, come as welcome news, if the RBZ sticks to it, for businesses and ordinary citizens who have borne the brunt of past currency changes.
For months, officials and politicians had been chanting a “mono-currency-by-2030” chorus, a narrative that economists and citizens were forced to challenge daily because it appeared detached from current economic realities on the ground.
Ordinary Zimbabweans, after all, have been the net losers in past currency experiments. A burnt child dreads fire, as the saying goes. The trauma of the 2007–08 hyperinflationary collapse of the Zimbabwe dollar, the bond note and coin experiments, and subsequent currency trials remain too fresh in public memory.
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In such circumstances, another currency transition is never an easy sell.
The court of public opinion was quick to condemn the Zimbabwe Gold (ZiG) upon its introduction in April 2024, drawing heavily from these painful historical lessons.
Industry bodies, financial institutions and economists had already warned against rushing into a mono-currency transition.
They argued that premature timelines scared away investors and further eroded already fragile confidence and trust in a financial services sector still recovering from the hyperinflationary scars of 2007–08.
Banks became increasingly hesitant to extend finance to productive sectors due to policy uncertainty surrounding the 2030 deadline. In response to this mistrust, many consumers retreated into “pillow banking”, preferring to hold cash outside formal financial channels. The inevitable result was tighter liquidity in an economy already starved of hard currency.
The RBZ’s latest shift, if sustained, suggests a welcome prioritisation of economic stability and foreign reserve targets over arbitrary deadlines often pushed onto the market by overzealous political rhetoric.
Yet for many Zimbabweans, the lingering question remains whether the RBZ is being sincere. Policy inconsistency and credibility deficits from both monetary and Treasury authorities have long been among the country’s greatest economic challenges.
This time, the hope is that sincerity will prevail. Only then can any eventual currency transition secure genuine buy-in from the public and industry players alike, something that has been painfully absent in past reforms.