Former Finance Minister and MDC vice president Tendai Biti said that the re-introduction of the Zimbabwe dollar to replace the multi-currency regime has failed to yield the desired results.
Speaking to the Daily News on Saturday, Biti likened the Zimbabweans’ loss of trust in the Zimbabwe dollar to a wife who has lost faith in a cheating husband. He said:
“De-dollarisation has failed … All of this is the sum of total idiocy of the government while its cheerleaders continue to applaud it.
“The local currency is … like a wife who catches her husband with his pants down. Trust will never be fully restored.”
Businesses and ordinary people have been ravaged by their own currency twice, so it’s a question of reality … self-defence.
There is nowhere in the world where a country that involuntarily dollarised has gone back to adopt its own currency. Cuba a few weeks ago went back to the American dollar.
Zimbabwe ditched the multi-currency system in June this year after businesses had started to accelerate informal re-dollarisation.
However, the local currency has been sliding in value exponentially since its introduction, with the government demanding taxes from certain sectors in foreign currency.