The Sunday Mail
Government is focused on ending speculative behaviour and ending arbitrage opportunities driving depreciation of the Zimbabwe dollar, as it believes the economy is in relatively good shape, Finance and Economic Development Minister Professor Mthuli Ncube has said.
At Tuesday’s Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ)’s foreign currency auction, the local unit was trading at $338: US$1, while on the parallel market it is going for anything between $500-$550 against the greenback.
Prof Ncube told a currency indaba convened by the Political Actors Dialogue (Polad) that the loss of value of the local currency was being caused by indiscipline in the market.
“When you look at the fundamentals, they are strong in the sense of the deficit position, fiscal position and the monetary policy position, and when we consider the current account situation as well,” he said.
“We should end the year again with a current account surplus with more inflows than outflows into the economy. So, the fundamentals are strong; there is nothing wrong with the fundamentals. It is really the arbitrage and speculative behaviour that we see in the market, and we have taken some measures to deal with that.” – New Ziana/Online Reporter
