Zimbabwe’s Mnangagwa wants country to have new currency by year-end

Emmerson Mnangagwa, Zimbabwe president.

ZIMBABWE was planning to establish a new currency by the end of this or in the first quarter of 2020 as it sought to revive its economy, said Bloomberg News citing comments by Emmerson Mnangagwa, the country’s president.

“It is necessary that we have our own currency,” he said in an interview in Maputo, Mozambique’s capital, where he was attending a conference. “I have faith that we’ll achieve that even before the end of the year or by the first quarter of next year.”

The state abolished Zimbabwe’s currency in 2009, after an episode of hyperinflation rendered it worthless, said Bloomberg News.

Since then, the southern African nation has used a basket of currencies, including neighboring South Africa’s rand and the US dollar. The country has quasi-currencies known as RTGS, which only exist electronically, and so-called bond notes, though a persistent dollar shortage has led to a precipitous decline in their value, it said.

Mnangagwa said his finance minister, Mthuli Ncube, has prepared the ground for a new currency starting with the first budget surplus he can recall in decades.

“I’ve been in government for 38 years as minister and I can’t remember when you ever had a budget surplus,” Mnangagwa said. “Now, this young man has been able to achieve a budget surplus in less than eight months. So it tells me that what he tells me is possibly true on these issues.”