I do not know what we have to say or do to get those in
authority here to understand that if they do nothing, Zimbabwe is headed for a
political storm, which could change everything or even sink the ship.
I am regarded as a perpetual optimist, I am not really as I
think quite rationally, but I always try to put forward a solution or way
forward that I think is in the national interest.
What am I talking about? Right now we have fuel queues like
I have never seen before, we have electricity outages for 18 hours a day.
Last week I learned of massive corruption at the Grain
Marketing Board, which has revealed that the maize stocks are simply not there
and furthermore, what is there is unfit even for livestock consumption.
A real panic is on to get maize here and fast. But at the
same time, prices for everything are being set at an exchange rate of 8 or 12
to 1 or even more.
The rapid rise in prices has halted temporarily following
the rash of measures adopted 10 days ago with SI 142, but there is every sign
that we are going to see it decline still further — the difference being that
the so-called bank rate is now leading rather than the informal exchange rate
markets.
Add to that shortages of key foods such as bread and
cooking oil, both essentials in our national diets, and you have the making of
a perfect political storm.
Choose your basis for a decent riot and will a dispirited
police and army be able to handle the subsequent events? I very much doubt it,
that is why the army was used both in 2018 and 2019, in January, with
disastrous results.
I have been saying to anyone who will listen in the past
two weeks that action across a broad front is needed to get markets operating
properly and to get prices down to a more reasonable level and to fix the
shortages. Sounds like a tall order, but it’s not.
The key is the interbank market for foreign exchange. Under
pressure from the Finance minister, the governor of the Reserve Bank of
Zimbabwe (RBZ) has announced the formation of a monetary policy committee and
an interbank market operating on a willing seller, willing buyer basis.
The former was announced as far back as December 2018, the
latter in February this year — seven and five months ago.
Nothing has been done to bring them into existence. I said
at a meeting last week, attended by the RBZ that no such market exists.
The RBZ responded that the banks published an exchange rate
every day — there must be a market. But there is nothing of the sort.
No electronic platform and no open, transparent, physical
market where buyers and sellers of foreign exchange can operate and clear
demand on a daily basis.
There is no formal market, banks continue to trade on their
own with what resources they individually control.
Let me repeat what I have been saying for months: We are on
the right track policy-wise, our macro-economic fundamentals are fine, we have
a fiscal surplus and are holding down government expenditure and we now have a
foreign exchange surplus. So why the crisis?
There should be no crisis, our foreign exchange earnings
come from three main sources — exports of goods and services, income from
tourism and what we call “invisibles” or net transfers and remittances from the
Diaspora.
Exports last year were US$4,3 billion, the other income
about US$1,6 and the Diaspora — who knows?
What I know is that we have five million or more adult
Zimbabweans living and working outside the country; three million in South
Africa, the rest overseas.
Money transfer agencies have millions of Zimbabwean
clients, none report transfers on average below US$50 per month. If you say 50
x 5 million, you get US$3 billion per annum.
Mukuru reports average transfers in 2018 of US$78 per transfer.
In my view, Diaspora remittances are not less than US$3
billion.
Look around you — queues of people collecting money, house
building worth billions every year — three million tonnes of cement, school
fees, groceries and chema (bereavement) payments.
If this is the case, we have about US$9 billion in forex
available to meet our needs for imports and other things.
Our imports have declined nearly 25% because of low
domestic demand at crazy prices.
These inflows of foreign currency are being managed by
three institutional sectors — the banks, the RBZ and the open market money
traders.
In each sector they are motivated, not by determining the
real market price on a willing seller/buyer basis, but by getting the highest
return for the dollar — the banks are chasing their tails driven by their
clients and the money changers make money on every turn and their clients want
top dollar.
So the exchange rate runs.
The major impact of the de-dollarisation and SI 142 was to
bring the foreign exchange in the informal market more into the banks and this
is what has reduced the exchange rate in the past 10 days from 15 to 1 to 8 to
12 to 1.
But the RBZ remains at the centre of this brewing storm in
its inexplicable reluctance to implement stated policy.
Over the past two weeks they are supposed to have put half
their retentions from exports onto the interbank market for trading purposes.
That is nearly US$1,5 billion a year or US$6 million a day
— a considerable sum. Banks report no such activity.
I can understand why, because we continue to see the RBZ
doing crazy things — they are issuing letters of credit to support purchases of
fuel and electricity and raw materials for the food industry — all good you
say.
But if we are selling fuel at half the landed cost of the
stuff, maize at 30% of its real value, wheat at the same rate and electricity
at 2US cents a KwH — we are going broke rapidly.
When we give government US$21 million to buy luxury cars
from Croco Motors at 1 to 1, we have bought that foreign exchange at 8 or 9 to
one — the entire loss of $150 million goes into the RBZ overdraft — the most
inflationary form of borrowing that is available.
Despite denials, I see new bond notes in the market — still
smelling of printer’s ink. What are they doing with that?
They are buying gold and then using the gold to settle the
bank’s external liabilities.
It is months since we saw any significant statistics on
anything from the central bank. What are they hiding? The truth is the RBZ is
totally out of control.
Why is this important? What has it got to do with the
perfect storm?
Everything. If we had an interbank market — say, a daily
gathering of traders of foreign exchange in the basement of the RBZ building in
Harare.
If all foreign exchange from all sources was placed on that
table every morning at, say, 10am.
If all banks came to the market with their clients’ needs,
a price would emerge from that table, which would reflect real supply and
demand.
If I am right about the supply and demand of hard currency
in Zimbabwe, the rate would come down immediately — my colleagues on the
Economists Round Table, a local think-tank, agree; it would fall below 4 to 1.
Standard
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