Source: Zimbabwe on diaspora charm offensive to shore up falling remittances | The Financial Gazette September 22, 2016
THE Zimbabwe government has embarked on an offensive to drum up faltering remittances from the diaspora, a central bank official said on Wednesday.
In the six months to June this year, diaspora remittances amounted to US$397 million, 13 percent lower than in the same period last year and the government wants the estimated five million Zimbabwean citizens resident outside the country to contribute more, to offset gaps in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).
FDI, which dropped 23 percent to US$421 million in 2015, is seen further declining this year, according to the central bank.
Morris Mpofu, the director of exchange control at the central bank said, the bank hopes the initiative will double the US$1 billion that was remitted into Zimbabwe last year through official channels.
But the central bank estimates that a further US$1 billion was also sent into the country through informal channels.
The central bank has extended the export incentive scheme for importers to diaspora remittances at between 2.5-5 percent of the amount sent to Zimbabwe through normal banking channels with effect from October 1 this year.
Mpofu said he was part of a team that returned from London on Tuesday, after meeting some Zimbabweans at the University of East London to impress upon them the need to send money back home through official systems.
Another team is expected to spend the next week in Canada, one of the countries playing host to a significant number of Zimbabweans, and is expected to round up the tour in South Africa, where an estimated two million Zimbabweans are resident.
“We met many Zimbabweans who showed keen interest in bringing money through official systems,” Mpofu told delegates at the launch of a partnership between Ecocash, the mobile payment platform owned by mobile operator Econet Wireless, and Mukuru, an online settlement platform domiciled in South Africa.
The majority of the people living in the diaspora left the country during a decade long political and economic crisis that ended with the formation of a unity government in 2009.
“There is need for us to move into this direction (encouraging people to remit funds through money transfer agencies). India receives $70 billion per year,” Mpofu told the delegates.
The partnership launched between Mukuru and Ecocash will enable Zimbabweans in South Africa to send money into the country via Mukuru.
The funds would then be instantly transferred into the recipient’s Ecocash wallet in Zimbabwe. The Source
COMMENTS
Diaspora is largely anti ZANU. They use other channels because they know and do not trust the government. This is another problem easily solved by a change of regime.
Anyone in the diaspora who is not anti Zanu seriously needs to do some soul searching!!
Being in the diaspora and supporting ZANU is surely the ultimate hipocrycy isn’t it? But they do exist, and apparently they live among us – GOD help any ZANOID I see here in this foreign land that I have had to toil blood sweat & tears!
Zanu will take the forex and give you bond notes. Don’t be fooled.
THERE IS NO WAY WE CAN REMIT OUR HARD EARNED MONEY OFFICIALLY, THEN THE GOVERNMENT TURNS AROUND AND USES THE SAME MONEY TO PAY POLICE THUGS WHO THEN GO ON TO ABUSE OUR KITH AND KEEN WHO ARE LEGALLY DEMONSTRATING FOR THEIR LOST RIGHTS. WE CAN NOT CONTINUE TO PROP UP AN ILLEGAL AND DYING REGIME, FORGET IT
You and the Govt are lying again, Mr. Mpofu. The diaspora avoid the Zanu system that murdered their kith and kin in Matabeleland. Would you submit money through a group of people who bayoneted your pregnant wife, and murdered your children in Matabeleland – so that they may steal a huge commission off your money?
I would never,and I say never prop up this useless regime,forget it,this is our hard earned money.
A dilemma – the money remitted is actually propping up the Govt who rely on it as cash flow.
The senders remit funds for their hungry families and also for the next brother or sister to get out and start earning Rands or whatever and do the same. It’s the world over. Whilst the money comes in, no change will happen or can happen simply that the recipient knows that they will get a hand out from their kin to survive and life goes on!
If all the money coming in ceased tomorrow the Govt would collapse whilst some of my kin would perish. What is the choice?
Sending money back home through official channels only to be stolen!!!
I am no part to that regime of hallucination.
What about the diasporian’s right to vote. Obert Mpofu you must think people in diaspora are daft…! You want them to remit monies in order to prop up the same gvt that is refusing them to exercise their rights , their right to vote. Seriously???What do you smoke you guys? ??
Too right Bill, they need us now, why can’t we vote? I think they smoking tanganda, ganga would probably expand they small minds. Why don’t they just resign and let people who want the country to succeed take over.
It is ridiculous for any government to expect income from the very people that it has forced to leave the country. This is now absolute joke. Zimbabwe should just be aborted and wiped off the world map.
Iw unoona zvi chimaker sense here izvozvo ndatumira 100 usd mai vangu vomira mu bank queue for 5 hours vopuwa 100 bonds
Apa Mataura chokwadi mdhara! Ndokunonzi kudhakwa chaiko kkkkkk!
The Zimbabwean Shona male is a rank coward. Real men would have done something a long time ago.