Zimbabweans importing 700 cars a day!

A message doing the rounds on the social media goes like this: “FM Mthuli Ncube might have pulled the most genius economics move of our times.

“Mthuli first made people panic and overspent buying things they didn’t need to get rid of their bond for little forex, every single person was getting rid of their bond everyone this why the rate kept going up because the market was flooded with it, but it was always going to run out it and that has happened in Byo already and it soon will in Harare cos people don’t have the bond to sell anymore, now simple supply and demand basics, it drops.

“So Mthuli basically burnt the bond out. Now that’s done it can be removed altogether. Now he really can back it up when he says rtgs will be 1:1 with US cos there is no bond to contend with, he doesn’t need to get $9bil because people won’t withdraw everything from their accounts it’s just not possible.

“He simply needs to have enough of a USD chunk to adequately allow the country to trade on the USD that’s all, that was the plan and that’s how he planned to get us out of the Bond note and boy is it brilliant. …”

That Zimbabweans panicked, and have been keeping a lot of money “under the pillow”, is demonstrated by the panic buying of goods that people do not really need and at exorbitant prices while whining all the time.

Businesses are capitalising on this as Zimbabwean consumers buy products at whatever price.

Commentator, Vince Musewe, condemned this attitude saying: “In other countries consumers boycott those shops that increase prices unreasonably. In Zimbabwe we buy at whatever price and even hoard and then blame the government.”

Now, according to the Herald, they are buying cars like hot cakes. They are buying 500 to 700 cars a day from South Africa and the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority has collected $7.5 million in car import duty in 12 days.

Mthuli Ncube recently revised Zimbabwe’s gross domestic product to $25 billion and when asked whether this was justified, he said he believed it could even be more than that.

“Have you seen the number of cars in Harare?” he asked. “It’s cars everywhere. Where is the money coming from?”

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