MDC Secretary for Education, advocate Fadzayi Mahere has said that policy inconsistency by the government is making it difficult to have long term plans or investments. This comes after the central bank, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe introduced Statutory Instrument 142 which bans the use of all foreign currencies as legal tender in Zimbabwe.
As of yesterday, the country was still using the multicurrency system which it adopted in 2009 following the demise of the Zimbabwean dollar.
There was no indication whatsoever, to tell that the government would shun the multicurrency system before November, let alone before the end of June.
This might have inconvenienced several stakeholders who had made investments. None of them could have imagined this move considering that government officials, including president Emmerson Mnangagwa, have been indicating that the earliest date for the introduction of a new currency was December.
Posting via a microblogging site, Twitter, Mahere said:
Let me just leave this here. I feel sorry for the “top FX trader on Wall Street” who was told not long ago by a PAC advisor that “we are in multi-currency environment.” The Govt flip-flops depending on the weather making it impossible to plan or invest for the long term.
There is still confusion as to how the new Zimbabwean dollar, which is said to be at par with the RTGS dollar will work. Fears abound over its possibility of returning the country to 2008 where shops became empty overnight.
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