As a move to combat the black market, the Treasury chief and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe(RBZ), last year decided to put a limit on the amount of money can be withdrawn.
The then established bank withdrawal limiting was placed at $2000. This limit was therefore unsatisfactory to a number of citizens who wanted the weekly limit to be reviewed. Unfortunately this was declined.
In senate on Thursday, Mthuli Ncube, Finance Minster, shared the following sentiments:
“The issue about regulating access to cash was triggered by the abuse that we had seen taking place from the use of the mobile banking platform in terms of electronic money.
We realize that it is necessary to restrict the cash withdrawals, the amounts that can be used at any point in time and be transferred at any point in time.
This is necessary for us to keep those restrictions in place as a general policy. If we loosen up on that, it will cause a lot of difficulties and basically, we will go back to where we were before, where individuals will access larger amounts of cash and then want to trade in the parallel market and just make our currency more unstable”
This decision is said to have been made as a way for government to keep the country’s currency stable.
Mthuli Ncube pointed out that the currency is currently trading at about $84 to 1US$. Some compare this to the $1 to US$1 rate that once was, not mentioning the drastic fluctuations in between, and point out that the currency was never stable to begin with. This point appears to highlight that the governments efforts to stabilize the currency seem futile.
Nonetheless, RBZ Governor, John Mangudya, shared his sentiments on the issue of not increasing bank withdrawal limits. He said that the country’s efforts in stabilizing financial system require team effort by all Zimbabweans and a willingness to comply with given mandates.
What about authorized dealers?
He said the following:
“The Bank’s Exchange Control Inspectorate and the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) have enhanced their monitoring and surveillance on the utilisation of foreign exchange in the market to foster market discipline.
Banks and mobile banking institutions are obliged to ensure that the Know Your Customer (KYC) and Customer Due Diligence (CDD) principles are complied with at all times.
In essence, FIU will continue to ensure that authorized dealers or banks and foreign exchange auction system participants comply with auction rules and regulations to stop the abuse of such financial systems.
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