Zimbabwe seems to have a new currency in the country. However, Zimbabwe's former trade minister and now opposition politician Nkosana Moyo stated: "Nobody knows what it is.”
What is clear, is that Zimbabwe has a troubled history with currency. In 2009 it ditched the Zimbabwe dollar and adopted the US dollar after hyperinflation destroyed its value.
But because more US dollars were leaving the country - in the form of payments for exports - than coming in, US money was in short supply. This led to long bank queues as people struggled to get their money out.
In 2016, the government introduced bond notes and coins, which were supposed to be worth the same as the US dollar, to make up for the cash shortage. But no-one had faith that they were equivalent and, on the black market, bond notes have lost value against the dollar.
Now the government has introduced the Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) dollar, which is being described by some as a new currency.
Up until now, as well as paying for goods in US dollars, Zimbabweans have been able to use other foreign currencies such as the South African rand, plus bond notes, debit cards drawing on bank accounts and money stored on a mobile phone app. But each of them had a different exchange rate, meaning that customers were sometimes charged different prices depending on their payment method.
The RTGS dollar is supposed to bring together bond notes and debit card and mobile money payments to make sure that they are all worth the same.
Significantly, the government has given up on the pretence that the bond note and the US dollar have the same value. Now it is saying that the value of the RTGS dollar against the US dollar will be set by the market.
It initially suggested that it should trade at 2.5 RTGS dollars to the US dollar, but this was significantly less than the black market rate for the bond note, which was selling at more than 3.5 to the dollar.
Source: bbc.com
