AS Government intensifies efforts to close channels that
are fuelling the black market and other illicit financial activities, it has
emerged that some foreign nations and individuals have been trying to cause
general paralysis in the country through manipulation of the market and
sponsoring non-governmental organisations, trade unions and the opposition to
lead demonstrations.
To curb illicit financial acts, Government has introduced a
raft of measures that include suspending mobile money transfers except for
receiving payments for goods and services.
The Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE) has also been suspended
to allow investigations after Government found impeccable evidence of
malpractices.
Apart from moving in to suspend some mobile money transfer
platforms such as on EcoCash, which as of Sunday last week held $8 billion in
501 000 agent and merchant lines, Government has also put in place a raft of
measures to protect the public from illegal activities that have caused
inflation and consequent price increases.
Government has rolled out US denominated cushion allowances
for civil servants, introduced cheaper public transport and kept subsidies on
basics such as maize meal among a host of other interventions.
Deputy Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet (in
charge of communications) Mr George Charamba said there is a political
dimension to the current challenges as the country is facing a multi-pronged
assault from some elements determined to turn the public against President
Mnangagwa and the Second Republic.
“There is a very strange coincidence that we have noticed
over quite some months between the implosive politics within the opposition,
self-implosive politics, and heightened illicit activity in the economy. You
have that mayhem in the MDC whose sum effect is that of weakening the
opposition in the country on the one and then you have increased below the law
and out of the law activities in the economy.
“We have realised that there is a clear nexus between
runaway market activities and runaway opposition politics, that more and more,
the security threat to this country, the destabilisation to this country is
finding expressing through the market, so there is heightened smuggling of
gold, there is heightened transactions, there is release of precious foreign
currency into the black market, all to create a generalised instability which
have the effect of creating disenchantment on the part of the Government,” said
Mr Charamba.
The MDC is presently consumed in serious power struggles
due to the failure of its leaders to adhere to its own party rules and
constitutionalism and with the opposition self-disemboweling, Mr Charamba said
the country detractors and anti-Second Republic funders are now trying to use
the market as a form of opposition against the Government.
“The politics are being shaped from the market, it is as if
we are being told, if you won’t have MDC-Alliance for an opposition then we
will create an opposition for you through illicit market activities, through
illicit NGOs, through disgruntled unions and through embassies mostly so given
to making anti-government statements, when you coalesce that you will realise
that we are in a phase where destabilisation has assumed a market form. The
calculation was a health sector led generalised public strike, we are aware of
such plots,” said Mr Charamba.
Last week, the Government announced the suspension of
phone-based mobile money transactions and trading on the Zimbabwe Stock
Exchange (ZSE) so as to allow for investigations into illegal dealings
connected with the foreign currency black market and also to put in place
reforms that restore mobile money platforms to their original purpose.
Government spokesperson Mr Nick Mangwana said in a
statement last week that stern measures against mobile money systems because
there is impeccable intelligence that made a prima facie case that mobile money
systems, with the deliberate or inadvertent help of the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange
(ZSE).
Trading on the ZSE, which was generating fake exchange
rates, in particular the Old Mutual Implied Rate that matches the prices paid
for Old Mutual shares on the London, Johannesburg and Zimbabwean stock
exchanges, has also been suspended as investigations are being carried out.
In a ZBC interview last night, Mr Mangwana noted that
mobile money systems were under the communications regulator Portraz, not the
RBZ, and so could not be monitored or audited.
Trading on the ZSE was generating fake exchange rates, in
particular the Old Mutual Implied Rate that matches the prices paid for Old
Mutual shares on the London, Johannesburg and Zimbabwean stock exchanges.
In the statement, Mr Mangwana said the Government now had
impeccable intelligence that made a prima facie case that mobile money systems,
with the deliberate or inadvertent help of the ZSE, were engaged in illicit
activities sabotaging the economy.
Some of the activities by mobile payment systems, that have
caused so much pain on the general public, include, illegal externalisation of
foreign currency through transfer mispricing, fraudulently creating and issuing
non-attributable and non-auditable agent cellphone lines and accounts.
Hiding irreconcilable accounts in suspense accounts that
hold huge balances for unjustifiable long periods and engaging in rampant and
unchecked tax evasion. Herald
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