Former Finance Minister Tendai Biti says the move by the decision by Treasury to withdraw operating licences from 17 pharmacies that were caught red-handed using exorbitant exchange rates is illegal and irrational.
On Tuesday, the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development issued a statement saying 17 pharmacies across the country that were using exchange rates ranging from ZWL$8 500 to ZWL$11 000 will lose their licences.
Posting on Twitter, Biti it is unlawful for the Government to take such drastic action without following due process. He wrote:
The attack on retailers, including the withdrawal of some pharmacy licenses is blatantly illegal, puerile, and irrational.
For starters, as a question of law, no adverse decision can be taken against any party without due process and respect for the right to be heard. What lawyers call the audi alteram principle codified in section 68 of the Zim constitution.
As an economic measure, we have always argued that “ginyanomics “ does not and can not work. Retailers are subject to market exigencies and in a cash economy, they will always possess huge amounts of cash.
That on its own is no basis for their criminalization. In dominated social formations such as Zim, a rogue State enacts laws & policies that invariably criminalize innocent rational behavior.
This regime is rogue & clueless. It is currently intoxicated by the myth that the Zim $ is holding. The truth of the matter is that cleaning up all RTGS$ in the economy and thus starving the economy of liquidity is not sustainable.
It is an ephemeral measure that will be exposed once the printing press begins to run to finance insatiable fiscal demands.
We have been here before. This economy can not be turned around by patchwork or kick-and-hope economics.
Real structural reform is required, which includes enacting laws to limit government borrowing, central bank reform, dollarization, scrapping the auction, and gold coins, scrapping export surrender requirements, addressing corruption and illicit financial flows, paying pensioners & civil servants in US$, floating the Zim$.
The truth is these reforms are beyond #ZANU. An exhausted ruling elite bereft of desire or capacity to transform Zim.
The Zimbabwe dollar has been on a positive trajectory on both the official foreign exchange market as well as the black market over the past few weeks.
On Friday, 14 July, the local currency moved to ZWL$4883.8208 per US$1 on the Wholesale Foreign Exchange Auction.
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