Currency manipulators-some powerful individuals and companies are on the prowl again at the expense of the economy and indeed at the expense of all and sundry.
These are self-defined economic saboteurs.
And should be brought to book as the exchange rate on the parallel market is rocketing again.
We support the move by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) to target people and businesses that are involved in exchange rate manipulation , because we are concerned that speculative behaviour could result in fresh destabilisation of the exchange rate.
Apparently, several foreign currency manipulators were this week exposed. Two weeks ago, the opening rate for the new currency was ZiG13.56 per US$1, but parallel market dealers are now trading at ZiG20: US$1.
In an effort to fight inflation and stabilize the shaky economy, Dr. John Mushayavanhu, the recently appointed governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, abandoned the Zimbabwe dollar and introduced the Zimbabwe Gold (ZiG), which is backed by gold and other precious minerals in addition to foreign exchange reserves.
This week, Business Times was informed by Oliver Chiperesa, the director general of the FIU, that the agency is actively enforcing the law that prohibits street foreign exchange vendors.
“For our part as FIU we have identified traders, especially wholesalers and manufacturers who are either not accepting ZiG or are putting an unjustified premium on the rate, and we are taking stern action on those.
“We have given them a warning to comply by the end of day today (Wednesday) after which we will be freezing their accounts and fining them,” Chiperesa said.
He added: “There are also those that are claiming they are still configuring their systems so are not yet accepting ZiG. We have told them that if it’s taking them that long to configure, they should stop trading until they are in a position to accept both currencies.”
According to Chiperesa, the intelligence unit keeps an eye on a variety of bank account activities to look for any infractions.
