The Sunday News
Vusumuzi Dube, Online News Editor
THE Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) has deferred the first foreign currency exchange auction of the year to 18 January after the recent spike in Covid-19 cases saw Authorised Dealers failing to submit their bid documentation required to carry out due diligence.
Initially the auction had been set for 11 January.
In a statement, RBZ governor, Dr John Mangudya said the Covid-19 pandemic had impacted negatively on the impact of the dealers to submit the required information for the due diligence to take place.
“The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe wishes to advise the public that the spike in Covid-9 infections has impacted negatively on the ability of Authorised Dealers to timeously submit essential information required to carry out the due diligence on auction bid documentation submitted by their clients.
“As a result, Authorised Dealers were not able to submit all the required information for the first auction of 2022, originally set for 11 January 2022. In order to give Authorised Dealers sufficient time to carry out the necessary due diligence and submit the required documentation, the first auction of 2022 will be held on 18 January 2022,” he said.
The foreign exchange auction is a system where the Central Bank regularly sells a given amount of foreign exchange through a bidding process and buys foreign exchange in the intervening periods at the previous auction-determined rate.
Government introduced the weekly foreign currency auction trading system to improve access to hard currency by businesses.
