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Still thinking about Zimbabwe’s currency crisis!
Read the latest:
Read the latest:
In Zimbabwe, everybody is a billionaire, yet they are dying of hunger! Zimbabwe is going through one of the toughest and roughest times in their history as a nation.
Data graphicInflation is at the highest and worst rate. National currency is worthless. 35 quadrillion of Zimbabwe’s currency gives you just one US dollar. A holder of 100 trillion bank notes receives 40 cents. Basic food such as bread and milk cost hundreds of trillions of bank notes to buy.
Certainly, Zimbabwe is going through a period of deep currency crisis. President Robert Mugabe has approved that before end of September 2015, the worthless national currency be thrown away completely.
Phased out! In a country with no money, all that the masses are doing right now beside silent
cry is still silent cry.
Zimbabweans will start exchanging “quadrillions” of local dollars for a few US dollars next week as President Robert Mugabe’s government discards its virtually worthless national currency.
The southern African country started using foreign currencies including the US dollar and South African rand in 2009 after the Zimbabwean dollar was ruined by hyperinflation, which hit 500 billion per cent in 2008.
At the height of the country’s economic crisis, Zimbabweans had to carry plastic bags bulging with banknotes to buy basic goods. Prices were rising at least twice a day.
From Monday, customers who held Zimbabwean dollar accounts before March 2009 can approach their banks to convert their balance into US dollars, the governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, John Mangudya, said in a statement.
Zimbabweans have until September to turn in their old banknotes, which some people sell as souvenirs to tourists.
Bank accounts with balances of up to 175 quadrillion Zimbabwean dollars will be paid $5. Those with balances above 175 quadrillion dollars will be paid at an exchange rate of $1 for 35 quadrillion Zimbabwean dollars.
The highest – and last – banknote to be printed by the bank in 2008 was 100tn Zimbabwean dollars. It was not enough to ride a public bus to work for a week.
The bank said customers who still had stashes of old Zimbabwean notes could walk into any bank and get $1 for every 250tn they hold. That means a holder of a 100tn banknote will get 40 cents.
The bank has set aside $20m to pay Zimbabwean dollar currency holders.
Foreign currencies like the US dollar and South African rand have been used for most transactions since 2009.
Local dollars are not used except high-denomination notes sold as souvenirs.
But from Monday, Zimbabweans can exchange bank accounts of up to 175 quadrillion (175,000,000,000,000,000) Zimbabwean dollars for five US dollars.
Higher balances will be exchanged at a rate of Z$35 quadrillion to US$1.
Zimbabweans have until the end of September to exchange their local dollars.
Hyper-inflation saw prices in shops change several times a day, severe shortages of basic goods and Zimbabweans taking their money to market in wheelbarrows.
Ahead of the abandonment of the Zimbabwean dollar in January 2009, officials gave up on reporting official inflation statistics.
Towards the end of 2008, annual inflation had reached 231m%, pensions, wages and investments were worthless, most schools and hospitals were closed and at least eight in 10 people were out of work.
The highest denomination was a $100 trillion Zimbabwean dollar note.
A four-year unity government, that ended in 2013 with President Robert Mugabe’s re-election, helped stabilize the economy but it still faces huge challenges. According to locals, with the worsening economic realities, Mugabe has collapsed again!
One of the problems has been the shortage of coins that kept prices high as retailers often rounded them up and shoppers were given change in sweets or pens.
Over the last six months, the central bank has introduced about $10m worth of “bond coins” into circulation, but they have not been popular with consumers who fear that it is the first step in the re-introduction of the Zimbabwe dollar.
During campaigning ahead of the last election, some ruling Zanu-PF party supporters had suggested this could happen, but the central bank governor has since ruled that out.
Zimbabwe’s economy has struggled since a government programme seized most white-owned farms in 2000, causing exports to tumble.
Mr Mugabe has always blamed the economic problems on a Western plot to oust him.
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