Zimbabwe gold coin now costs a million plus

Zimbabwe’s gold coin, introduced on 25 July to mop out excess liquidity in the market and shore up the local currency, is now selling for more than a million dollars after breaching the million mark on Thursday.

The price of the coin is based on the London bullion market plus 5%.

The introduction of the gold coin, together with other measures such as the hiking of interest rates to 200% and the freezing of payments to government suppliers until after a value for money audit, saw the local currency firm on the black market but it appears to be sliding again.

According to Zimpricecheck, the Zimbabwe dollar is now pegged at $850 to the United States dollar using the swipe rate on the black. It stands at $820 on mobile money and $800, cash.

It had once dropped to $800 for swipe.

Inflation rose to 285% in August but month-on-month inflation was slashed by more than half to 12.4% in August down from 25.6% in July.

The central bank said annual inflation would continue to rise until end of September because of the lower base effect in 2021.

The bank said it will introduce lower value gold coins in November.

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