Government Lifts Import Restrictions

GOVERNMENT has lifted all restrictions on the importation of basic commodities to boost market
supplies and granted 100 percent retention of domestic foreign currency earnings, with a further
fine-tuning of the official foreign exchange auction system expected to tackle resurgent price
madness and stabilise the economy.

In addition, Treasury will henceforth adopt all external loans to the Government and continuously
review domestic interest rates to promote wider local dollar usage and savings by key economic
players.

Announcing the latest measures yesterday, Finance and Economic Development Minister, Professor
Mthuli Ncube, said the interventions have been necessitated by the resurgence of speculative
macro-economic instability in which domestic inflation is driven primarily by the skewed preference
for the use of the United States dollar as a savings currency.

The recent spate of price increases linked to wild parallel market rates has led to the erosion of
people’s incomes and is constraining aggregate demand for goods and services.

This has piled enormous pressure on the exchange rate as the skewed preferences have continued
to increase the velocity of the Zimbabwe dollar, said Professor Ncube.

The phenomenon has seen a growing US-dollar cash economy and it is estimated that a large portion
of domestic transactions are now being conducted in foreign currency, he added.

This is despite the underlying strong fundamentals realised from the comprehensive positive fiscal
and monetary policy reforms implemented under the Second Republic led by President Mnangagwa
since 2018.

“It is against this background and following wide consultations with the private sector and other
stakeholders that Government now announces the following policy measures:

(i) In order to enhance the supply of basic goods to the public, all basic goods will no longer be
subject to import licences and will also come into the country free of import duties and taxes.

(ii) In order to promote the banking of domestic sales in foreign currency, the Reserve Bank of
Zimbabwe will with effect from 15 May 2023, exempt all proceeds from domestic sales in foreign
currency from the 15 percent surrender requirement.

(iii) All external loans to the Government will now be transferred from the Reserve Bank of
Zimbabwe to Treasury. The Foreign Exchange Auction System will be further fine-tuned and will now
auction a pre-announced envelope on a pure Dutch auction basis.

Citing the importance of interest rates as a key variable of focus and one of the main tools for
monetary authorities to discourage speculative borrowing and reduce the velocity of the Zim-dollar,
Prof Ncube said the Central Bank through its Monetary Policy Committee, will continue to review the
domestic interest rate framework to allow domestic currency savings interest rates to be above the
perceived rate of expected devaluation for holding ZWL balances, to be attractive to savers.

“In the short-term, Government needs to immediately cause short-term interest rates of tenors up
to six months to rise sharply, with longer-term rates remaining low, to reflect future inflation
expectations,” he said.

“This will squeeze out speculative demand for both ZWL and USD.”

Further, Government will going forward entrench promotion of the use of the domestic currency by
Government agencies for their domestic transactions by ensuring that levies and fees charged by its
affiliated agencies and service providers, are to be paid for in local currency.

Prof Ncube said the Treasury was pleased with the uptake of both the gold coins and gold-backed
digital tokens by the market and assured the public of the confidence in both instruments, which
remain fully backed by physical gold reserves.

“Government remains committed to maintaining macroeconomic stability and the elimination of
harmful and destabilising arbitrage conditions that have pervaded the economy at the expense of
the generality of citizens,” he said.

Meanwhile, Prof Ncube said the economy remains on the right path with positive strides being
registered in line with the National Development Strategy (NDS1) blue-print.

“The Zimbabwean Economy remains on a firm growth path, with all key productive sectors
registering positive growth. After registering about four percent growth in GDP for 2022, we
anticipate that growth for 2023 will be significantly higher than the initial projection of 3,8 percent.

Already, the country has achieved food security riding on improved agriculture production backed by
enhanced Government and private sector support initiatives.

On the back of the re-introduction of the Zimdollar, which brought about clarity to currency markets
together with a number of advantages to the economy, among other policy steps, Prof Ncube said
industrial capacity utilisation and productivity continue to grow, with about 70 percent of goods on
the shelves now being locally produced.

Widely visible and tangible competitiveness of the local industry is also evidenced by the notable
growth in manufactured exports and observable import substitution effects, he added.

“The broader economy, including the mining sector, has particularly benefited from having a
significant realignment of domestic costs from the rebasing of wage costs in particular to the
domestic currency,” said the Minister Ncube.

“We have seen an increase in unofficial (shadow) foreign exchange reserves as private holdings of
foreign exchange, which are available for use in both domestic and external trade transactions as
reflected by healthy levels of foreign currency deposits in the banking sector.”

Actually, foreign currency receipts across all categories of inflows have increased by at least 100
percent compared to a few years ago, according to official figures, the highest level in years with
foreign currency receipts expected to top US$13 billion this year.
The Chronicle