TRANSACTION FREEZE: Matter arising in Zimbabwe by Don Abiodun Odedeyi

My prayer, this morning goes to the people of Zimbabwe as they usher in four, additional, foreign currencies as legal tender.

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) announced recently that the Chinese yuan, Japanese yen, Indian rupee and Australian dollar will be accepted, with Zimbabweans and exporters able to open accounts in the various currencies.

In 2009, the US dollar, South African rand, Botswana pula and British pound were approved as legal tender to override worthless local Zimbabwean dollar. 

Continuous political unrest, fiscal instability has rendered Zimbabwe's currency soft and while it floats erratically , we've seen, among it results, ONE TRILLION zimbabwe DOLLAR single bill.

First, I believe it is important to re-integrate Zimbabwe back into the league of nations, ease economic sanctions and reach a compromise with the embattled Mugabe.

Thankfully, the 2014 Zimbabwe National Budget was in some way admittance and acceptance of the key challenges facing the nation away from the usual sanctions rhetoric. Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa in a way tried to balance the aspirations of the new economic blue print, the Zimbabwe Agenda for Socio-Economic Transformation, which seeks to foster economic growth buttressed by increased public and private investment in the economy.

The biggest challenge to this move is trust. In the name of nationalization, many corporations lost their investment in Zimbabwe. Patrick Chinamasa should address this first if truely, Zimbabwe is serious about it economy woes.

'TRANSACTION FREEZE'
The United Nations and indeed, the US should be concern about the potential chaos the current arrangement of multi-legal tender might cause with cash shortages and fluctuating exchange rates adding to the already difficult economy.

While citizens might manage a difficult economy transformation,only divine knows what they will do to a transaction freezed situation where one currency is favoured to another or one currency is rejected outright.

Report credited to SW Radio Africa has it that Zimbabweans have started abandoning the use of the neighbouring rand, because of its falling value.

"Anything that is broken can be fixed, and Zimbabwe is no exception", Yes! and fixing broken 'things' are better done as a team.


CC:
United Nations Development Programme (Nigeria)
registry.ng@undp.org

Zimbabwe Embassy (Nigeria),
Nigeriazimabuja@infoweb.abs.net