Tsvangirai calls emergency national executive meeting Thursday to decide way forward on bond notes

The shadow cabinet of the Movement for Democratic Change led by Morgan Tsvangirai today agreed to summon its national executive on Thursday to decide what action to take in connection with the government’s decision to introduce bond notes.

“After three-hours of intense deliberations, the MDC cabinet resolved that the matter had huge national implications, prompting President Morgan Tsvangirai to urgently summon the party’s national executive on Thursday to enable the executive political organ of the party to sculpt a comprehensive political response to the economic madness,” party presidential spokesman Luke Tamborinyoka said in a statement.

“It is the party’s executive political organ, the national executive that will craft the political response to this imminent danger that threatens to plunge the whole country into instant instability and chaos.”

The governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe John Mangudya announced last week that the government would be introducing bond notes to ease the current cash shortage. He did not give a date but said this could be in two months.

He said the notes would be backed by a $200 million facility from Afreximbank.

Industry has welcomed the move but the public fears this will plunge them back to the crisis the country experienced in 2007 and 2008 when it recorded the second highest inflation in history.

“Government’s decision to print the so-called bond-notes, with a value of up to $20, signifies a return to the stressing national times nine years ago,” the MDC cabinet said today.

“Ordinary Zimbabweans lost their savings; pensioners lost their life-time savings while companies and other institutions were shortchanged as the economy tumbled until the MDC presence in an inclusive government brought stability and unprecedented economic annual growth figures, which peaked at 12percent in 2012.”

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