The Zimbabwean government has begun its bond notes awareness campaign as the country gears for the \u201csurrogate currency\u201d, which many say they fear to embrace in the event a hyperinflationary environment similar to the 2008 one recurs.<\/p>\n
Back in 2008, inflation hit 500 billion percent and when government introduced the multi-currency system, all depositors\u2019 accounts were credited to zero.<\/p>\n
In May, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor, John Mangudya, announced the country would introduce bond notes as a temporary measure to plug the biting cash crisis the country is going through, which has seen many customers sleeping in bank queues.<\/p>\n
But the authorities are yet to announce dates for the introduction of the surrogate currency.<\/p>\n
In a statement late Monday, Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa said the central bank would, with immediate effect, start the process towards the issuance of bond notes as a legal tender.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe process will commence with media publicity to inform and raise awareness of the public on the denominations, design, form, material and security features which are used in the bond notes to be introduced. This is to ensure that the public is not duped by fake bond notes that may be circulated into the market by unscrupulous elements in our society,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe is satisfied that the public is sufficiently conversant with the salient features of the bond notes, it will proceed to issue the bond notes accordingly in line with the export incentive scheme.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Monday, President Robert Mugabe gazetted Statutory Instrument 133 of 2016, which provides a legal framework for the introduction of bond notes as acceptable tender in the country.<\/p>\n
Statutory Instrument 133 of 2016, Presidential Powers (Temporary Measures) Amendment of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Act, empowers the central bank to issue out bond notes using its preferred design, form and material.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe minister may, by notice in a Statutory Instrument, prescribe that a tender of payment of bond notes and coins issued by the (central) bank that are exchangeable at par value with any specified currency other than Zimbabwean currency prescribed as legal tender for the purposes of Section 44A, shall be legal tender in all transactions in Zimbabwe to the same extent as that prescribed currency.\u201d<\/p>\n
In terms of the SI, the central bank will have the prerogative to determine the design and form of bond notes and coins.<\/p>\n
The RBZ and Chinamasa say the bond notes are guaranteed by a US$200 million African Export Import Bank (Afreximbank) loan facility, where the new local currency will be at par with the United States dollar.<\/p>\n
The bond notes will be first introduced in US$2 and US$5 denominations before gradually rolling out the US$10 and US$20 notes.<\/p>\n
By end of December this year, bond notes worth US$75m should have been released.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Zimbabwean government has begun its bond notes awareness campaign as the country gears for the \u201csurrogate currency\u201d, which many say they fear to embrace in the event a hyperinflationary environment similar to the 2008 one recurs. Back in 2008, inflation hit 500 billion percent and when government introduced the multi-currency system, all depositors\u2019 accounts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":188473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[248],"tags":[6175,6153,500,5563,6155,427,426,6154,4686,5699],"class_list":["post-7453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-zimbabwe","tag-afreximbank","tag-bond-notes","tag-harare","tag-harare-news","tag-hyper-inflation","tag-mugabe","tag-robert-mugabe","tag-surrogate-currency","tag-zimbabwe","tag-zimbabwean-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}