The scrapping of the multi-currency regime last month was not made in haste, but was carefully planned as Government had been working on it since last year.

This was revealed by Finance and Economic Development Minister Professor Mthuli Ncube in an interview with a local weekly newspaper.

“We had a fiscal policy that was a risk to monetary policy and to the entire macroeconomic environment, but when I got in, we managed to put the fiscus under control, then I realised that we were walking on one leg,” said Prof Ncube.

“We also need the monetary policy, then we have a complete tool kit to also deal with the macro-economic environment. We have been on the journey towards currency reforms, we just didn’t tell you. We started on October 1 (last year).”

Prof Ncube said Government did not effect the currency reforms in panic, as has been suggested in some quarters given that Statutory Instrument 142 of 2019 came at a time the parallel market rate for foreign currency was going crazy.

“No, this was not a panic move, and so on the 1st of October we separated the accounts as you recall and in January we did a quasi-currency reform in the form of fuel price and of course, the reaction was, I would say interesting and then, on the 20th of February we introduced the interbank market exchange rate and formally abandoned the fixed exchange rate of 1:1 and on 24th June we introduced the domestic currency,” he said.State media