The Sunday News
Harare Bureau
THE Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe will take delivery of freshly-minted bond notes in the next eight days — the first step towards introducing the export incentive which will help ease the prevailing liquidity challenges.
When the notes arrive, banks will be required to release the sum total of exports recorded between May and September 2016.
The RBZ will then give them five percent of that amount in bond notes before the notes can be withdrawn by exporters.
The Government is finalising the relevant legal framework to pave way for the notes, with business saying it will embrace the incentive as it will make trade more fluid.
RBZ Deputy Governor Dr Kuphukile Mlambo told our Harare Bureau, “Bond notes will be available at the end of October. I don’t know who was talking about end of November. Remember that they are coming into the market through banks. It doesn’t mean that you will see them on the streets on the 31st of October because it depends on how long it will take for the banks to inform us how much exports have come in.”
Dr Mlambo added, “We will calculate five percent of the value of those exports and pay them to the bank. We don’t just put the notes on the streets like we used to do with the bearer cheques. We deposit them with the banks so that the banks will have them within their US dollar, rand and bond note vaults. lt is up to the banks to determine how to disburse that when people come to withdraw.”
Dr Mlambo allayed public fears that bond notes will replace US dollars in depositors’ accounts, saying no one will be forced to withdraw their money in bond notes.
“When people are withdrawing their salaries, they will withdraw them in US dollars. This is in the same way that people are now allowed to withdraw their money in rand and any other currency that is within our basket of multiple currencies. So there will be no bond note account, there will be US dollar accounts. Even for the exporter, what will reflect on their statements is US dollars. The bond notes only come in through the banks because they are given to the banks, not the exporter. The bank will credit that amount in US dollars but in their vaults will actually have bond notes.”
He said the public will have a choice to withdraw bond notes.
“Those who want to withdraw their money in bond notes are free to do so and those who want to withdraw in US dollars can do so as well, provided that they are available at their particular bank. You only get bond notes by choice and that is why we are saying if you have got a bond note and you are travelling to South Africa, you can go to your bank and say, ‘I need the rand or US dollars in exchange of this bond note.”
Dr Mlambo dismissed media reports that German-based company Giesecke and Devrient had refused to print the notes. He indicated that another company could have been contracted to print the notes, but refused to reveal the identity of the foreign printing company.
“I don’t even know where that came from (the alleged refusal of the German company to print money). We are going to introduce them soon (bond notes) and they are going to be printed outside the country’s borders, I can’t reveal where exactly but outside our borders. For now that’s what I can say. For more information you can talk to Governor Mangudya who is outside the country (Germany) on business.”
