2016-05-09 Mon

Bonded notes similar to the $200 million ones are going to be soon introduced by Zimbabwe. This is a consequence of the deteriorating cash crisis which made banks limit cash withdrawals by depositors.

Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor John Mangudya announced that a series of measures will be implemented to combat the deep economic crisis. He believes that bond notes will promote liquidity. Zimbabwe abandoned its own currency in 2009 for the current multi-currency system. A new family of bonded currency will include localised notes holding the same value as that of the US dollar.

$2, $5, $10 and $20 Zimbabwean notes will be introduced in future as an extension of the current family of bond coins to ease portability in view of size of the USD200 million backed facility. To provide liquidity for business trading operations, the facility will also be used to discount trade related paper.

Bond coins in denominations of 1 cent, 5c, 10c, 25c and 50c were issued in December 2014 to provide loose change and stop Zimbabweans from rounding off prices to the next dollar.

Zimbabweans have often resisted the reintroduction of the Zimbabwe dollar which they blame for the loss of their savings during the hyper inflationary period before 2009.

Currently, the government is finding it hard to pay its expanded workforce and has no money to use as well.