Proposed plans to transition Zimbabwe from a multi-currency regime anchored on the United States dollar to a Zimbabwe Gold (ZiG) mono-currency system have once again stirred anxiety within the business sector — the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) itself has acknowledged.
Government introduced the ZiG currency in April 2024, the latest in a long line of monetary experiments since the economy was dollarised in 2009 following the devastating hyperinflation of 2008.
Authorities now want the ZiG to become the primary legal tender, ending years of reliance on the US dollar as the dominant currency of trade.
RBZ governor John Mushayavanhu has sought to calm market nerves, arguing that a domestic currency is the cornerstone of long-term financial stability.
Speaking through his deputy, Innocent Matshe, at a recent 2025 Economic Review and 2026 Outlook meeting in Bulawayo, Mushayavanhu insisted that fears around the transition were misplaced.
He pointed to what the central bank describes as improving fundamentals — single-digit inflation, positive real interest rates and sustained price stability.
According to RBZ figures, month-on-month ZiG inflation has averaged around 0,3% since February 2025, while annual inflation declined sharply from a peak of 95,8% in July 2025 to 4,1% by January 2026.
Yet for many businesses, anxiety around RBZ policy pronouncements is not driven by ideology or resistance to reform. It is rooted in lived experience.
Over the years, the central bank has overseen — and at times spearheaded — abrupt monetary interventions that dramatically altered the operating environment, often with little warning or consultation.
While many measures were introduced in the name of stability, their cumulative effect has been a deep erosion of trust between the RBZ and the private sector.
The hyperinflationary collapse of the 2000s remains a defining scar. Firms saw working capital, savings and balance sheets wiped out.
When confidence slowly returned under dollarisation, the introduction of bond notes in 2016 and the forced separation of the RTGS dollar from the US dollar in 2019 once again rewrote the rules overnight, fundamentally revaluing corporate balances.
For business, predictability is not a luxury — it is a necessity. Companies can adjust to strict regulation, high interest rates or currency controls.
What they cannot easily absorb are sudden policy shifts that invalidate contracts, reprice debt and undermine long-term planning.
The result has been a defensive business culture: reluctance to borrow locally, preference for hard currencies, shortened planning horizons and limited appetite for long-term investment.
These behaviours are often mischaracterised as speculative or unpatriotic, yet they are rational responses to repeated policy reversals.
The RBZ’s greatest challenge is, therefore, not technical capacity, but credibility.
Confidence cannot be decreed. It must be earned through consistency, transparency and a sustained record of restraint.