RBZ utilises  $500m loan facility Dr John Mangudya

Nqobile Tshili, Chronicle Correspondent
The Government has started utilising the $500 million foreign currency loan from Afreximbank to support critical sectors, stabilise prices and ensure availability of essential commodities, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) Governor Dr John Mangudya said yesterday.

In a statement, Dr Mangudya said the apex bank has started accessing the loan facility to support critical sectors of the economy.

“The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe wishes to advise members of the public that it has started drawing down foreign currency from the US$500 million lines of credit advised in the Monetary Policy Statement issued by the Bank last week. As advised, the purpose of the facility is to fund the procurement of essential commodities including fuel, electricity, wheat and raw materials for the manufacturing of cooking oil and packaging,” said Dr Mangudya

He said there is enough fuel supplies in the country as the Central Bank on Friday disbursed $40 million to procure it and is being distributed across the country.

“The Bank is grateful to the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe for working round the clock to ensure that the fuel is delivered to the oil marketing companies across the country,” he said.

“In view of these positive developments, the Bank would like to assure the public that there is sufficient fuel available in the country and therefore there is no need for panic-buying of fuel and other essential commodities.”

Artificial fuel shortages have seen motorists spending most of their times in fuel queues, filling their tanks as well as jerry cans creating a false shortage of the commodity.

In Bulawayo commuter omnibus operators notified the public that effective from today they will increase kombi fares by 25 percent in response to market forces.

Prices have unjustifiably increased since the announcement of new taxes by the Finance and Economic Development Minister Professor Mthuli Ncube and the Mid Term Monetary Policy.

Commodities that include cooking oil, milk and drugs are part of the goods whose prices have shot up.

Most furniture shops and supermarkets have removed prices on shelves and customers are told the prices at the tills.

Dr Mangudya said willy-nilly skyrocketing prices were not justified.

He said the price hikes were fuelled by black market forces which do not represent fundamentals of economics. “The Bank has noted that increase of prices of certain goods has followed the spike in foreign currency parallel market rates which is being caused by some people bent to dupe the public of their hard earned income,” said Dr Mangudya.

“The opportunists are manipulating foreign currency parallel market rates to cause unnecessary panic and despondency and destabilisation of the economy.
Such counterproductive behaviour is unwarranted and should be condemned by all peace loving Zimbabweans.”

Dr Mangudya said the multi currency regime will remain in use and the RBZ shall continue to secure lines of credit to supplement the country’s foreign currency earnings from exports and Diaspora remittances in order to support the economy.

Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) president Mr Sifelani Jabangwe said the injection of the $500 million will result in price stabilisation.

He said Government has addressed the issues that had seen the market negatively responding to new measures.

“The prices will start to stabilise because what we saw is that the market took a bit of time to process the impact of measures that were announced last week. The prices will actually come down because what you were seeing is the state of panic in the market, suppliers were not sure whether they should continue doing business,” he said.

Mr Jabangwe said next week should witness an increase in production and said Government should prioritise producers when allocating foreign currency. — @nqotshili

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