RBZ unveils special coins

via RBZ unveils special coins – DailyNews Live 5 DECEMBER 2014 by JOHN KACHEMBERE

HARARE – Zimbabwe today unveiled a set of $10 million special “bond” coins.

The coins, which arrived in the country this week from South Africa, are aimed at easing the change crisis.

This comes as Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa in his 2015 National Budget announced that the first batch of the coins was going to be received during the first week of this month, with actual circulation starting mid December 2014.

“The Reserve Bank will soon embark on campaigns to educate the general public on the features of the coins,” he said.

The southern African country ditched its local currency in favour of foreign currencies in January 2009 after hyper-inflation reached 500 billion percent.

Zimbabwe mainly uses the United States dollar and South African rand for transactions but businesses usually round-off prices and give consumers vouchers or sweets as change because the country lacks coins.

Ecuador, another country that uses the US dollar as its currency, has special coins, centavos, which have the same denomination and value as US coins.

Retail outlets have to make do with giving customers sweets and other small grocery items as change due to limited coins which are in smaller denominations.

New central bank governor, John Mangudya is of the view that the availability of the coins will lead to a reduction in prices of commodities, as they had been originally priced with the absence of coins in mind.

In September this year, Mangudya said RBZ would also be importing rand coins of 10c, 20c, 50c, R1, R2 and R5 to buttress the multiple currency system.

The imminent introduction of the special coins had raised fears that government wanted to return the banished Zimbabwe dollar to replace the multi-currency regime.

The central bank and the government, however, denied the rumours of the re-introduction of the Zimbabwe dollar.Zim to unveil new coins