VICTORIA FALLS – President Robert Mugabe’s regime will continue using the multi-currency system in Zimbabwe for the next five years. Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa confirmed this at a pre-budget seminar in the resort town of Victoria Falls over the weekend.
“The multi-currency system will remain for the next five years. I do not want to continue being asked that question. It is going to be a multi-currency regime,” he said.
“The multi-currency system will be the form and basis of our programmes for the next five years. Let that be clear to everybody. We might actually add more currencies to the cocktail of the currencies we are using now, depending on how that currency will be benefiting the country,” he added.
In August this year Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor Dr Gideon Gono was forced to assure Zimbabweans that the government had no plans to reintroduce the Zimbabwean dollar in the near future.
The statement, issued after a spate of panic withdrawals by depositors, as a reaction to Zanu PF’s win in the controversial July 31 elections, was meant to calm the market after uncertainty caused the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange to trade in the negative.
President Robert Mugabe intends to bring back the Zimbabwean dollar during his reign, as one of the ways to salvage his legacy. He has however said the return of the local currency would not be rushed.
“This statement serves to emphatically dismiss those rumours and to confirm that there are no plans whatsoever, within and outside the Bank, for the immediate or near-term introduction of new currency or re-introduction of the Zimbabwe dollar into our system,” said Gono.
“His Excellency the President clarified this issue, for the umpteenth time, stating the same position as we are alluding to above and adding that ‘when the time comes, we will be very cautious and gradual about it’,” Gono said at the time.
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