Government has dismissed as ‘rubbish’ allegations that it is printing bond notes in a bid to contain the cash crisis that has reportedly seen prices of basic commodities going up while bank queues continue to be the order of the day.
This follows social media posts by a group of independent individuals going by the moniker “TeamPachedu” who have for a couple of days ago raised alarm alleging the central bank has turned on, its printing machine.
“…We are back to factory settings as hoards of cash bundles like these below find their way out of the bank onto the black-market. RBZ released more than $200 million dollars in bond notes over the past few weeks as shown in our earlier tweets.”
But in a telephone interview with 263Chat today, Finance and Economic Planning Minister, Patrick Chinamasa could not be drawn into commenting on the rumors saying its rubbish before hanging up his phone.
“That is rubbish allegation, thank you very much. Its rubbish,” he said.
Efforts to get a comment from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor, Dr John Mangudya and his deputy Dr Jesimen Chipika were fruitless as their mobile phones went answered.
In November 2016, government introduced bond notes as a stopgap measure to avert cash crisis and barely two years on, Zimbabwe is still battling against a liquidity crisis that has seen the United States dollar trading as high as 60% against the surrogate currency.
The Harare streets have of late been flooded with new bond notes popular known as ‘bricks’ raising fears that the central bank could be printing new notes to buy the much needed foreign currency on the parallel market. The development has also seen commodities pricing increasing in retail shops as fears of the 2008 era looms.
