Mangudya: Money Is The Root Cause Of All Evil

Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) Governor, John Mangudya, said that the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) is investigating individuals and companies who are putting money on the black market resulting in the depreciation of the local currency, the Zimbabwe Dollar.

He made the remarks while delivering a public lecture at Manicaland State University of Applied Sciences last Friday. Said Mangudya:

Money is the root cause of all evil. Exchange rates are being manipulated because people have money.

That is why the exchange rate rapidly moves from US$1:ZWL200 to US$1:ZWL300 and then to US$1:ZWL400 within a short space of time.

Each day I try to figure out where the money doing rounds on the parallel market is coming from and we now know what is happening.

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That is why we had to temporarily stop banks from lending money.

We wanted to see the real culprits pouring money into the parallel market. We monitor the banks to ensure that they have the right systems.

Although the real people who put money on the parallel market are not easy to dictate as they use third parties to do so, our Financial Intelligence Unit is working day and night to flash out these culprits.

Very soon we will expose all their activities and bring them to book.

Our country has a lot of people with delinquent behaviour and I have been wondering where this is coming from and have concluded that our past experiences are now shaping people’s behaviour.

But then we can’t continue living in the past. Let us move forward and build our economy.

Mangudya said the suspension of duty on selected basic grocery items is to ensure the availability of the products at affordable prices. He said:

Opening the borders ensures competition in the market.

Local retailers were increasing prices willy-nilly and we decided to open the borders to ensure the availability of the products and price stability.

If we have more goods on the market, there will be price stability.

The central bank governor also said rising inflation was partly caused by global events as well as drought during the 2021/22 season. He said:

Inflation is going up in every country and Zimbabwe cannot go against the grain. The growth of this economy is related to drought or weather patterns.

When there is drought, the economy goes down, when we receive good rains, the economy goes up.

We expect people to grow more wheat this year so that the economy can continue to grow.

More: The Manica Post