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The central bank of Zimbabwe began Friday to negotiate a heavily discounted replacement currency, trying to reduce the lack of liquidity that has dampened the economy and plunged millions of people into poverty.
Zimbabwe adopted the dollar in 2009 but, as the chronic currency shortage worsened, introduced a parallel bond system that was pegged to the currency 1: 1. US.
Effective reintroducing a national currency, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) announced Wednesday the establishment of a "managed float" of the surrogate, which would bring much less than a dollar on the black market .
Bonds and electronic dollars, locked in individual accounts for months due to lack of liquidity, will be merged into a separate currency called RTGS (real-time gross settlement), the central bank said.
The governor of the bank, John Mangudya, told the company's executives that the US government had sold $ 2.5 RTGS to the banks.
Commercial banks reopened Friday after a holiday, but with foreign exchange facilities ranging from US dollar bonds at the same rate of 2.5 limited to foreign currency and corporate account holders, queues on the outside did not seem longer than usual.
Other members of the public should theoretically be able to visit banks on Monday and buy US dollars with bonds or electronic dollars.
But we do not know how many US dollars the central bank, which has only enough currency for two weeks of imports, has sold to banks.
Bonds and notional electronic funds have plummeted in Zimbabwe's black market over the last few months, at about 4 to the dollar.
Many foreign traders have stopped accepting bond obligations as legal tender, leaving companies such as flour mills, breweries and miners stranded.
Economists have cautiously welcomed the central bank's decision to let its currency devalue.
The RBZ hopes that its new measures will moderate the demand for dollars on the black market and dampen inflation as the new currency stabilizes at fair value.
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