FIU Vows To Maintain Crackdown On Currency Manipulators

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) says some manufacturers and the informal sector are restricting the quantities of goods they sell for the local currency, ZiG. As a result, the FIU’s blitz against currency manipulators will continue until full compliance is achieved.

In an interview with The Herald, FIU Director General, Oliver Chiperesa, said compliance from retail shops has been encouraging but some manufacturers and the informal sector were still problematic. Said Chiperesa:

So, over the last three months or since the ZiG was introduced, we have seen a positive uptake. We have seen the business community, mostly in the retail sector and the wholesale sector, generally, all businesses in the formal sector accepting the ZiG and most of them are accepting it at the correct rate.

Compliance levels have been very, very high. Since that acceptance, I think this is the reason why you see that there’s been some stability in the market in terms of the exchange rate.

It is a testament to how the ZiG has been embraced and accepted by the trading community in general.

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Tuckshops, restaurants, vendors, commuter omnibus operators, grocery shops, saloons, hardware shops and some manufacturers are among those rejecting ZiG. Said Chiperesa:

As far as the blitz is concerned; even when you have wide acceptance, you still have a few errant players, so our blitz continues to make sure that everyone complies.

What I can say is that while we have wide acceptance by formal businesses, there’s still some limited acceptance by the informal sector.

Although we are seeing increasingly positive signs even from that sector, we are still seeing some bit of resistance among some of the players, some small businesses and the informal sector.

They are splitting their invoices to say if a retailer is buying from them, they would say 15, 20 or 30 per cent is payable in ZiG and then the rest they are demanding foreign currency in US dollars.

We are now dealing and engaging with those suppliers and manufacturers. We have fined several already and we are putting our emphasis on those manufacturers and suppliers because they affect the entire supply chain downstream.

I think those are the two areas that I would say are still causing a bit of problems, manufacturers and the informal sector. They have been a little bit slower in accepting the ZIG.

Chiperesa appealed to the informal sector and other businesses to accept the ZiG to maintain currency stability that has been achieved since the introduction of the new structured currency. He said:

My message to the market is that yes, the last three months we have seen some stability that we had not enjoyed in the foreign exchange market for a long time.

So this stability is all down to the cooperation that we are getting from most businesses and we want to continue to encourage those who have been complying to continue doing so.

We are also encouraging those that have not been fully embracing the ZiG or have been putting a premium, to desist from such practices.

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