MP says bond notes are our currency let us just tell the people that

 These notes Mr. Speaker Sir, if you attempt to take them outside the country, they do not have any value.  What we have been doing as a country, we have been using these dollars to circulate in the country, devaluing them and denying the country money for balance of payment support.  So, what the Minister has done is trying to secure these dollars in a state that if you want to buy something outside the country we can use the dollar in a usable form.  If you go to the bank today, you will get US dollars which are so soiled that you cannot even do anything with them.  We have been allowing this situation to go on, using the precious foreign currency that we have to circulate in the country to buy mazhanje, tomatoes and when we want to use the very same dollars to purchase precious things which we do not manufacture in this country, we could not.

So, I want to thank the Hon. Minister for bringing the Bill and for trying to rectify the situation.  Mr. Speaker Sir, I would like to also say we need a lot of controls.  If you go to other countries and you want to withdraw maybe $10,000, you are given a nice seat and a cup of coffee while they verify why you want such a huge amount of money.  In this country, when we dollarized, you could walk into the bank and withdraw $100,000 with no questions asked and that bled the country.  I therefore implore the Minister to look into all those issues so that we have the foreign currency that we need to buy those things that we do not have, the things that are critical for the functioning of the country and remove all the leakages that have been there.

 Another area, as alluded to by Hon. Mashakada is that when bond notes were being introduced, so much emphasis was given to the 5% export incentive to the extent that an ordinary person who is not an exporter was in limbo.  They were not sure what bond notes were being introduced for.  I think the advertisements should be crafted in such a manner that they reflect that this is our currency and the foreign currency that we have is stored somewhere and you are going to use these bond notes, which are equivalent to the US$.  The moment that we start using these superlatives that this is for exporters and so on, my grandmother who is in the rural areas will not understand it.  When you then try to give them that money, you confuse them.  So let us tell people this is our currency and we are trying to rectify the situation.  We applaud the Minister for that.  I also think we need a situation where we have to move away from this export incentive idea and we gather those exporters and give them this message, it will be helpful to the country.

The other point that I want to speak about is that we had so much advertisements about the introduction of the bond notes.  We created this anxiety and expectation and when they were released, we only saw $2 and a few coins.  When you create this high demand and then you have trickling money coming into the system, you end up with a situation where a lot of people are now sleeping in bank queues.  Maybe the Minister can correct that through some form of education, telling people of the gradual introduction as opposed to the way it was advertised.  However, I think it was something which was overdue and we should applaud the Minister for doing that and encourage him to keep on introducing measures that will ensure that the economy improves.  I thank you.

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