Finance Minister, Professor Mthuli Ncube has claimed that currency reforms were properly planned for. This is contrary to popular belief that the reforms particularly the introduction of Statutory instrument 142 of 2019 was haphazard and premature.
The SI reintroduced the Zimbabwe dollar and outlawed the use of all foreign currencies for domestic transactions.
Ncube said that the reforms were necessary since the fiscal policy was a risk to the monetary policy and to the entire macroeconomic environment. Ncube said:
We also need the monetary policy, then we have a complete tool kit to also deal with the macro-economic environment. We have been on the journey towards currency reforms, we just didn’t tell you. We started on October 1 (last year).
No, this was not a panic move, and so on the 1st of October we separated the accounts as you recall and in January we did a quasi-currency reform in the form of fuel price and of course, the reaction was, I would say interesting and then, on the 20th of February we introduced the interbank market exchange rate and formally abandoned the fixed exchange rate of 1:1 and on 24th June we introduced the domestic currency.
We have been on the journey. Maybe the issue is we moved faster on certain things, slower on certain things.
Ncube said that he announced upon appointment that he would prefer a scenario whereby Zimbabwe had its own currency. He added that dealing with speculators forced them to keep their cards close to their chest.
More: The Chronicle.