Below are tweets posted by United Kingdom based Brighton Musonza explaining the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe’s move to re-dollarize during the coronavirus.

Following the Monetary policy announcement by RBZ yesterday, many people felt the regime had finally seen the light and heeded calls to dollarize to control the runaway inflation.

But Musonza felt the move was simply a desperate bid by government to remain afloat during the global lockdown when remittances are down. The government is also in a catch-22 situation due to delays to open the tobacco selling season which is one of the avenues channeling foreign currency in the country.

Below are some of tweets picked by ZimEye…

Latest RBZ actions are merely an attempt to mop up and fundraise available USDs into State coffers. As it faces imminent lockdown sharp Cashflow downturn. Diaspora is not sending money because of many COVID-19 reasons; so are many export channels and international payment systems

The structure of Zimbabwe economy is that it pays most of its bills in March-April during tobacco selling season. COVID-19 has changed all that; so govt has gone full blown to smoke out for any US dollars lying around in the economy. Hence this RBZ “dramatic” twist. Sanyeberwe!!

So what has happened is that Diaspora remittances have dried up, mineral export income plummeted by 60% ($400m). Tobacco floors have not opened. Beit Bridge Border closed. And soon food will dry up or be sold in the alleys. It’s a serious situation that is about to unravel.