Finance and Economic Development Secretary George Guvamatanga said Government ordered the separation of Foreign Currency Accounts (FCAs) and real time gross settlement (RTGS) accounts because some banks had begun cheating their clients of part of their United States dollar savings.
Guvamatanga said this when he appeared before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Finance and Economic Development. He said some banks would only allow their clients to access part of their funds. Said Guvamatanga:
So to protect those with access to such funds, it was very important to separate so that there is no confusion and I know — I come from the banking sector that in the past if you received money from the diaspora or from whatever source some banks would tell you that you can now access 70 percent of your money because the Reserve Bank said we should take the other 30 percent, which was not true. So there was an element of market indiscipline that was now starting to creep in and discouraging those with access to US dollars from bringing it into the formal system and we were trying to address that matter by saying let’s separate the accounts under the multi-currency system, which is still Government policy as we speak.
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