US Dollars And Bond Notes/RTGS Are No Longer The Same
Banks Given Two Weeks To Separate US Dollar Accounts And RTGS/Bond Accounts
Saved under Banking, Business, News, SOUTHERN AFRICA, Zimbabwe
Tags: Bond, Bond Notes, RTGS
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The major highlight of today’s monetary policy statement was the directive that banks must now separate the Nostro foreign accounts and local RTGS or Bond with effect from 15 October 2018.
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What it means
This means that officially Zimbabwe has two currencies, that’s US dollars and RTGS/Bond. Consequently, banks will allow depositors to hold separate accounts for US Dollars and RTGS or Bond. And yes, what the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe is saying that what you have in your account right now is a local virtual currency called RTGs/Bond.
Before today, US dollars and RTGS or Bond were held in the same regard by banks as they were kept in a single account, a move that was introduced as far as 2009 when Zimbabwe dollarized.
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This signals that RBZ has finally come into touch with reality by seeing that RTGS is not at par with the US dollar. It seems RBZ was afraid to fully demonetize the bond notes and the same time feared to fully dollarize the economy. So they have tried to strike a balance for the short term with this move. Now they must allow prices to be quoted in Bond and US Dollar.
We are going to see supermarkets charging two different prices, one in USD and another in RTGS or Bond. Wait, supermarkets will even charge three prices, one in US dollars, another in RTGS and another in physical bond notes. Or will there be one price for goods and it will be up to them to take either to swipe in USD foreign currency account or RTGS or Bond?
Well, with this I personally think that Zim dollar has returned and it still informally in the form of RTGS/Bond However, officially they didn’t announce they didn’t say it Zim Dollar has returned.
And by the way Techzim has done an insightful report on Zimbabwe’s Payments Systems. You can purchase it below.
