THE MINISTER OF FINANCE, ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND INVESTMENT PROMOTION (HON. PROF. NCUBE): Thank you Hon. Mushoriwa. I want to thank Hon. Togarepi for his question where he said that he has noticed that some street traders are back in the street corners and they may start attacking our domestic currency again. I thank him for that information. I received similar information as well as early this afternoon. We are going to send out our law enforcement agency to do their work on a blitz to make sure that these vendors are dealt with. They are cleared off the streets and then the heavy fines are also imposed on those who are caught trading in the parallel market. It is illegal. Therefore, if it is illegal, then the law has to take its course. I am also urging our law enforcement agency to move with speed to deal with this matter. We cannot allow it.
I will now turn to Hon. Mushoriwa regarding the delays perhaps that the notes should have been ready earlier than announced. Well, you know that it is a major exercise of introducing a new currency. Many things have been put in place, and even printing a currency is a logistical nightmare, it is not any easy thing to do. Again, if he could be patient and bear with the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, they have really done their best in making sure that everything is ready. For instance, we have to change the system in terms of balances which I described. Some of you are already experiencing that because you have ZiG accounts, you have to print new money. You have to make sure that the gold in our case is in place, diamonds are in place and there are just so many variables that need to be dealt with to issue a structure of currency.
Madam Speaker, it is not surprising that may be one or two things did not happen as anticipated, and on time. It is just a complex issue but I think that the public will understand and I hope Hon. Mushoriwa will also understand.
I now turn to the second issue that he raised regarding the announcement of fiscal measures that this should have been done simultaneously. Not necessarily Madam Speaker Ma’am. If you notice, we only announced one issue in that Statement which had to do with 50%, the rule that 50% of the corporate taxes should be paid in domestic currency. That is the only thing that was really announced on the fiscal front. There will be more coming through. You know, we have just gone through what I will call a very grueling period Madam Speaker Ma’am since the announcement of the 2024 Budget with various tax measures and so forth, making adjustments, sugar content tax, this and that. We did not want as fiscal authorities, to start announcing further things on the fiscal front. We have just gone through that. We think the industry is fairly comfortable now. We want to make sure they are accountable so that they can continue to employ more people to grow export and so forth.
Madam Speaker Ma’am, personally, I did not want to start imposing further fiscal measures immediately. We will do those gradually overtime but something is coming. That is the reason why we held back on announcing a few fiscal measures after having gone through fiscal measures through the 2024 Budget.
On the perception of the currency, that perception is very important. He is right, a currency also depends on both fundamentals and perception, how it is and how it is managed. We will do everything to educate the public as to why this currency is strong in the way it is structured. We have reserves that guarantee the notes and coins in circulation. We are saying those notes and coins in circulation which is known as reserve money should never be increased before the reserves are increased in the first place, so that matching mechanism really guarantees the stability that citizens are always looking for. We believe that this is a very good desire and if you have got gold in there as one of the elements, gold has been stable and citizens believe in the value of gold. It has been stable for a while and in fact, it has been performing strongly in the last few years.
We believe that educating the public about the design of the currency, how it has been put together will give them a level of confidence. I would like to urge Hon. Mushoriwa to be confident about ZiG and use it all the time. It is his currency; it is my currency and it is everybody’s currency. We should all be proud of it. After all, a country derives its social pride from the flag, national anthem and also from its currency. I thank you Madam Speaker.
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