Cash transactions down only 8 percent – RBZ data

Cash transactions declined by eight percent from $5.3 billion in July to $ 4.9 billion in August, as an acute shortage of bank notes forces more people to use online payment methods, data from the central bank has shown.

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) noted that the total value of mobile and internet based transactions in August amounted to $766 million, from $709 million in July while cheque transactions declined by 14 percent to $7.9 million during the same period.

“The value of transactions processed through the RTGS system increased by 0.4 percent to $3.93 billion in August 2016, from $3.91 billion recorded in July 2016. RTGS transactions volumes also registered a 5 percent increase from 242 373 in July 2016 to 253 938 during the period under review,” said the central bank in the latest monthly report.

Overall, transactions processed through the National Payment System (NPS) were up marginally from $6.319 billion in July to $6.359 billion in August.

Annual broad money supply increased by 2 percentage points to 16.8 percent in August driven by an increase in short term deposits, statistics from the central bank have shown.

Demand deposits grew by 30 percent while savings were up 11.6 percent. Over 30-day deposits however recorded a decline of 0.79 percent during the same period.

On a monthly basis, the growth in broad money supply increased by 1.7 percent from $5.1 billion in July 2016, to $5.2 billion in August 2016.

Annual banking sector credit increased from $5 billion in August 2015 to $5.8 billion in August 2016.

Month-on-month banking sector credit declined by 0.10 percent from $5.7 billion recorded in July 2016.

Credit to the private sector declined by 7.1 percent from $3.7 billion last August to $3.4 billion in August 2016 making it the sixth consecutive year-on-year decline since March 2016 as banks impose tighter lending conditions.

“On a month-on-month basis, credit to the private sector decreased by 0.02 percent, from $3.4 billion in July to $3.4 billion in August. Developments on private sector continued to reflect cautionary lending by banks, in an environment characterised by a slowdown in economic activity.” reads the report.- The Source

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