Finance Minister Professor Mthuli Ncube says currency speculation is unjustified in Zimbabwe.
Speaking in Parliament, he said: “I thank the hon. Member for this very important question. It is very important that we protect our currency, maintain its stability and discourage unnecessary speculation. This speculation is not justified. It is clear what are the fundamentals that drive the value, which underpin the value of this currency, and therefore it should be clear to everyone that this currency must be stable and the appropriate official exchange rate must be used for transaction purposes. In our desire to protect that, Mr. President, we impose certain measures and sanctions on those who deviate from this goal.
First of all, for those who operate retail establishments or retail establishments and sell goods to the public, we as a government insist that they must use the willing seller’s foreign currency exchange rate as the basis for pricing.
What we did last week after the presentation that I made here before this House before the Joint Budget and Finance Committee as well as the Industry and Commerce Committee, I pledged that we would remove the 10% limit on some prices and it was removed and subsequently replaced it was presented to this House and we discussed it and the House agreed to it. We are very grateful to him. We removed any basis for formally deviating from the official exchange rate, and the 10% exchange limit was causing deviation as an excuse for overpricing purposes. Therefore, from now on, we make use of a willing-buyer-willing-seller pricing mechanism, and any deviation will be penalized by a fine of no less than 200,000 zigzags per violation. These are already the measures we have taken to handle pricing by retailers.
As for individual street trading etc., it is clear that they are doing it without any licenses, they are violating the exchange control regulations and the law has taken action against those who have violated and we have seen a few or more than 70 people arrested. The police did their job and some of them appeared before the courts to face justice and stop what they were doing. It is very important that we all abide by the law to protect our currency.
After all, this is the only local currency we have. Other currencies are actually foreign currencies, we cannot develop a country without your own currency, and we cannot have a complete package of microeconomic tools without our own currency and monetary policy. I thank you, Mr. Speaker of the House of Representatives.
I thank the hon. Mavunga for this supplementary question. Yes, the FIU has been effective in investigating illicit activities, money laundering and other aspects, and in fact, has imposed penalties on those who deviate from set exchange rate or pricing frameworks, but of course, we can never say that they did so. All the capabilities they need.
In fact, they wrote to me to say, Secretary, we need more capacity and I’ve given them that and we’ll give them more resources so they can hire more staff equipment or whatever they need like tools of the trade to remain globally effective. Earth, but this is one hand. presence. Mavunga wanted to know more about the police side.
Again, we’ve said to law enforcement agents and police that if they need additional capabilities, we’re happy to support that whether it’s equipment mobility, we have to support that because that’s an important issue. I can assure him and I can assure the nation that we truly care about business and we will make sure that our agencies and our law enforcement agencies are adequately equipped to handle the situation. I thank you.
