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| Africa Subsaharan |
| Zim banks start reissuing chequebooks |
| 2009-08-18 |
| [Mail and Globe] Zimbabwe's gradual recovery from economic collapse was marked on Monday with the return to the country's banking system of one of the rest of the world's most basic business instruments -- the cheque. The Bankers' Association of Zimbabwe said in a statement that local commercial banks would start with immediate effect to issue their customers with chequebooks, for the first time in more than a year. Until now, business has been conducted almost exclusively with foreign cash. Economic chaos brought about by President Robert Mugabe's reckless policies of rigid price controls and the printing of vast quantities of banknotes reached its worst point early this year, with inflation allegedly hitting 50-billion percent and the national currency, the Zimbabwe dollar, plummeting to a sextillionth of a US dollar. Bank transactions ground almost to a complete halt, except for sporadic issues of the Zimbabwe dollar, while business was conducted nearly exclusively in cash black-market deals with the US dollar. As the value of the Zimbabwe dollar fell drastically over single days, payment by cheque -- taking several days to clear -- became pointless. Even same-day electronic transfers were stopped because of sharp falls in the Zimbabwe-dollar value between morning and afternoon. The crisis was dramatically halted after the inauguration in February of a power-sharing government between Mugabe's Zanu-PF party and long-time rival Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The MDC took over the Finance Ministry and immediately abolished the Zimbabwe dollar and established the US dollar and the South African rand as official legal tender. Inflation is now about 3%. Commercial banks closed clients' Zimbabwe dollar accounts and allowed them to open fresh accounts in hard currencies. However, business executives say the return to banking normality has been slow, because of a critical shortage of US dollar and rand cash, and because of Zimbabweans' reluctance to put money in foreign currency-denominated accounts. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #3 Turkey's comment would, under normal conditions, bring a bit of humour. Unfortunately, things.... they be not so normal at the moment. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2009-08-18 13:01 |
| #2 I nominate Turkeyneck for SNARK OF THE DAY. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2009-08-18 12:50 |
| #1 Economic chaos brought about by President Robert Mugabe's reckless policies of rigid price controls and the printing of vast quantities of banknotes That could never happen here. |
| Posted by: Slolump Turkeyneck3483 2009-08-18 03:57 |