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Chinamasa says Zimbabweans need to change their dirty mindset to ease cash shortage

Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa says Zimbabweans must change their dirty mindsets that you need cash to buy everything and should start using plastic money.

Responding to questions in Parliament about the present cash crisis in the country, Chinamasa also said Zimbabweans must realise that they must export to get cash because the country does not make United States dollars..

“All of us are earning in US dollars but we do not make US dollars, none of us makes US dollars,” he said in response to a question from Movement for Democratic Change vice-president Thokozani Khupe.

The first step, therefore, was to incentivise exporters.

“The export incentive is primarily intended to build a larger pool of foreign currency so that we can meet the demands of manufacturers,” he said. 

“I recognise the problem you mentioned about shortage of foreign currency to buy raw materials and so on. 

“I consider it temporary in the sense that we have taken measures through the Central Bank to move away from the previous system of an over liberalised foreign exchange market. 

“We are now moving towards a managed foreign exchange market.

 “We have set out priorities over usage of that foreign currency to address the key priority uses which are importation of fuel and raw materials. 

“We are building – basically we are going towards there.  The problems you mention are temporary in my view. “

Below is the full question and answer section of cash shortage

Continued next page

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This post was last modified on June 30, 2017 12:47 pm

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Charles Rukuni

The Insider is a political and business bulletin about Zimbabwe, edited by Charles Rukuni. Founded in 1990, it was a printed 12-page subscription only newsletter until 2003 when Zimbabwe's hyper-inflation made it impossible to continue printing.

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