Zimbabwe black market forex traders go underground

Zimbabwe’s Financial Intelligence Unit has dealt a blow to the black market, according to one of the platforms that publishes black market foreign exchange rates for information purposes only.

“The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) has dealt what could be considered a death blow to the blackmarket. Traders have gone to ground,” Bluemari said today.

“To reflect the situation on ground Bluemari will not reference any rates until we are able to re-establish the rates from sources.”

Marketwatch which aggregates information from the various platforms had no indicative rates today except for the Old Mutual Implied Rate.

It is not yet clear how long this will last.

FIU, an arm of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, has been clamping down on ways through which traders pay their clients such as transfers through Zipit, mobile money and Whatsapp.

The black market rate had rocketed to between $82 and $92 to the greenback.

The official rate was pegged at 25:1 in March but the country is introducing an auction system next week which will determine the exchange rate.

Zimbabwe also announced yesterday that it will be paying all civil servants an allowance of US$75 a month, across the board, to cushion them against the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

Somme civil servants have been insisting that they should be paid the money in cash but the government says they will be paid through an electronic card to allow the money  to circulate within the formal sector rather than end up on the black market.

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