THE Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) will introduce new Zimbabwe notes in November this year, a development which is expected to end the long queues at the banks, a member of the RBZ’s Monetary Policy Committee has said.
Eddie Cross told State-owned Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) that the RBZ will put the first notes of its reintroduced currency into circulation in November.
Zimbabwe has been chronically short of paper cash, forcing most transactions onto electronic platforms such as mobile-money system Ecocash.
“We have insufficient cash in the system to meet people’s needs for transactions,” Cross said.
“The new notes should do away with the queues at the banks and people then should have adequate money for daily use.” The Zimbabwe dollar was reintroduced in June in electronic form after being abolished in 2009 following a bout of hyperinflation.
Amid an acute US dollar and liquidity crunch, Zimbabwe is going through a tumultuous economic environment, characterised by high unemployment, a crippling power deficit, low industrial and agricultural production and runaway inflation.
Cross is a member of the nine-member monetary policy committee (MPC) of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, which is chaired by central bank governor Dr John Mangudya and was appointed by Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube in September this year. He also served as an opposition MDC Senator for Bulawayo South and held the finance portfolio in the opposition party then led by Morgan Tsvangirai.
Other members of the MPC include the RBZ deputy governors; Dr Kupukile Mlambo and Dr Jesiman Chipika, industrialist and businessman Kumbirai Katsande, ex-Government advisor and economist Professor Ashok Chakravati, former ABC Holdings chief executive Doug Munatsi, Professor Theresa Moyo and Mrs Marjorie Ngwenya
