Cash queues resurface in Harare

HARARE – Long queues for cash have resurfaced in Harare as most financial institutions were caught napping by the huge numbers of people that have thronged banking halls over the past few days to withdraw money to prepare for the festive season.

On Friday night, some clients could be seen sleeping outside the First Street branch of Central African Building Society (CABS), while long winding queues were again observed at the same branch on Saturday morning.

The liquidity crunch also hit hard Beverly Building Society along Samora Machel avenue. Even commercial banks such as Kingdom and Stanbic were also affected with long winding queues at the city branches.

In a statement, central bank chief Gideon Gono said the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe was not responsible for the queues and blamed lack of funding from treasury.

Gono said most of the banks did not have enough notes to cover demand associated with the festive period. He said the central bank could no longer perform its core function since it “was acutely under funded by treasury, leaving the institution with no capacity to independently perform the lender of last resort function, let alone to import currency for banks”.

Finance Minister Tendai Biti, availed in his 2010 national budget statement US$10 million to the central bank to cover it’s operations.

Cash shortages were last experienced following the dumping of the inflation-ravaged local currency in preference for other currencies such as the United States dollar, British pound and South African Rand earlier this year as banks struggled to pay public workers in hard cash.

But the cash shortages soon disappeared after the International Monetary Fund offered technical support to improve Zimbabwe’s payments system to enable banks to disburse foreign currency allowances to thousands of civil servants more efficiently.

This Christmas is the first in many years that Zimbabweans are going to be able to enjoy after a unity government between sworn enemies President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai formed last February managed to end political tensions and halt a sever recession that had ravaged the country for the past decade. – ZimOnline

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