Zimbabwe Finance Minister to meet journalists tomorrow

Zimbabwe Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube is to have an “informal engagement” with local and international journalists in Harare tomorrow morning, the Ministry of Information announced.

Ncube, who is upbeat after being showered with praise by President Emmerson Mnangagwa on the way he is running the country’s economy, is likely to brief the journalists on the proposed new currency and measures to curb the run-away inflation as well as the falling local currency.

Mnangagwa told Bloomberg news in Maputo on Wednesday that Zimbabwe is likely to have a new currency before the end of this year or at the latest by March next year.

He said his Finance Minister had prepared the ground for the new currency.

“I’ve been in government for 38 years as minister and I can’t remember when you ever had a budget surplus,” Mnangagwa said.

“Now, this young man has been able to achieve a budget surplus in less than eight months. So it tells me that what he tells me is possibly true on these issues.”

Ncube is 20 years younger than Mnangagwa.

Mnangagwa and Ncube want Zimbabwe to have its own currency so that they can be in charge of monetary policy and to allow the country to develop but they are under pressure to redollarise as the local currency, the RTGS dollar continues to plunge against the United States dollar.

Prices which are pegged on the black market rate of the RTGS dollar against the greenback have also rocketed rendering most workers’ salaries valueless.

But economists say all the fundamentals are right so they do not understand why the local currency is losing value so fast. They blame this on cartels.

Former Confederation of Zimbabwe boss Busisa Moyo said those thinking of dollarisation were off the mark as the country does not have enough cash to make any meaningful transactions.

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