The Sunday Mail
Livingstone Marufu
GOVERNMENT remains optimistic that basic commodities’ prices will soon stabilise due to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe’s continuous allocation of foreign currency towards critical raw materials, among other interventions.
Since January this year, basic commodities have recorded marginal price increases due to foreign currency shortages and inflation. The impact has, however, been limited as authorities continue to provide foreign currency for the productive sectors.
Government has set up a special Cabinet task force to that effect to ensure retail shops have sufficient supply of basic commodities at reasonable prices.
The inter-ministerial task force has started work across all provinces.
Industry and Commerce Minister Dr Mike Bimha told The Sunday Mail Business that given these concerted efforts, prices will stabilise.
“Given the laid groundwork, we remain optimistic that prices of all essentials will stabilise soon. The central bank is constantly giving oil producers and other basic commodities’ producers forex allocations every week to avert potential shortages.
“We have set up a special Cabinet taskforce which oversees the provision of basic commodities at affordable prices, therefore continuous price increases from those whom we are allocating forex to is not expected.
“There will be no reason to hike prices when you have been given foreign currency to buy critical raw materials,” said Minister Bimha.
He said the central bank is allocating US$30 million a week for basic and essential commodities importation with around US$15 million being spent on fuel and electricity imports.
He said the availability of foreign exchange has remained stable due to growing exports.
Minister Bimha is aware that essential prices are still marginally high.
“Prices vary from one shop to another, from the surveys we are carrying out some shops still have high prices than others but the general report on basic commodities is that prices are slowly getting back to the old prices prior to the panic buying,” he said.
“Cooking oil 2-litre bottles were at around US$5,99 in September then around US$4,50 in the beginning of October but now are around US$3,60 which is a few cents from where they were before.
“The same goes for sugar which went up to around US$2,30 per 2kg, it’s now at US$1,90. We are slowly getting there but there’s still a long way to go.”
The RBZ has also introduced a US$600 million Nostro Stabilisation Facility from Cairo-headquartered African Export Import Bank (Afreximbank) to start addressing the foreign currency deficit on the market.
The Nostro Stabilisation Facility is meant to deal with ongoing delays in the processing of foreign payments by banks for the procurement of productive imports as part of a raft of measures to stabilise the economy.
The facility will cover the foreign currency gap that widened after the closure of the 2017 tobacco marketing season. RBZ has also released US$300 million under the Export Incentive Facility to stimulate production and ease cash shortages.
The Afreximbank-supported US$300 million facility was released as soon as the old US$200 million bond note-linked regime expired.
