South African banks are no longer willing to export United States dollars to Zimbabwean banks.
The move was taken due to the risk associated with dealing with local banks.
This development was revealed by Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) deputy director for financial markets William Manimanzi. He said:
I think you are all aware that we are not officially dollarized.
When I say officially dollarised, I mean we don’t have an agreement with the United States that we were going to adopt their currency officially; we just unofficially dollarised. What that means is it’s very difficult to bring cash (USD) in this economy.
Where do we get our cash (USD) from? Ordinarily, we import from South Africa and most of the banks due to what is called risking issues, have now given us notice that they can no longer provide our own local banks with cash.
So we are in a catch 22 situation. The only bank remaining was FNB and they gave notice in December that they will no longer supply our own local banks with cash.