RBZ governor John Mangudya said on Monday that they will initially print 400 million Zimbabwe dollars, which will be gradually introduced in circulation to fill gap left by end of dollarization.
Mangudya told a
parliament committee that individuals would be allowed to withdraw up to $1 000
a day from their foreign currency accounts without restrictions but that
companies would have to talk to their banks if they needed cash dollars.
Zimbabwe abandoned the Zimbabwe dollars in 2009 after one of the most extreme episodes of hyperinflation in history, adopting the US dollar in its place.
But for the past two years the country has experienced an acute, ongoing shortage of greenbacks.
Zimbabwe made its interim currency, the RTGS dollar, the country’s sole legal tender last Monday, ending a decade of dollarisation and taking a another step towards relaunching the Zimbabwean dollar.
The new currency will now be the sole legal tender in the country. Under the new law, the RTGS dollar is at par with the Zimbabwe unit.
In June the inflation
figure eclipsed 100% to confirm the re-admission of the local economy into the
recession mode for the first time since 2008. The International Monitory Fund
(IMF) predicted that Zimbabwe’s economy will contract by 5.2% before revising
the figure to 2.1% in line with the deliverables in the Staff Monitoring
Programme (SMP). The World Bank points that the Zimbabwean economy is now in
recession and will shrink by 3.1% in 2019.
