By 
Government must dollarise because they are failing to properly enforce laws regulating the exchange rates in the country, Citizens Coalition for Change Member of Parliament for Harare East and Former Finance Minister Tendai Biti has told Parliament.
Biti was speaking during Parliament’s question time in the National Assembly on Wednesday.
The opposition CCC deputy president said government has failed to consistently enforce regulations hence the chaos in the economy and should now dollarise.
“Madam speaker my question is directed, its a supplementary directed to my friend the Minister of Finance, he banned the use of foreign currency in two laws statutory Instrument 33 of 2019 and Statutory Instrument of 142 0f 2019.
“In SI of 127 of 2021 which is now in cooperating with the Finance Act we are in fact protecting the Zim Dollar to make sure that every trader uses Zim dollar and to penalise traders who refused to accept the Zim dollar such as OK Barzaaz and others who are refusing to accept the local currency for the USD so there is no dual pricing system legally in Zimbabwe, ” Biti said.
He said instead of enforcing these regulations business has moved to reject the local currency in favour of foreign currency without any effort from government to penalize it.
Biti added that Minister of Finance Mthuli Ncube was misrepresenting to the country that Zimbabwe has a dual pricing system.
“Number two the use of foreign currency by traders including OK Barzaz is an acknowledgment of the failure of de-dollarisation process,” said the Harare East lawmaker.
“That formal traders are still using foreign currency against regulations banning the same means that the government has failed to de-dollarise hence they should consider dollarising once more.”
Biti has warned Zimbabwe was sleepwalking into another economic meltdown as happened in 2008 that resulted in the implosion of the local currency.
Comments