The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) has ruled out introducing ZiG50 and ZiG200 to the market anytime soon over fears the bigger notes will fuel inflation.
Speaking during a Chamber of Mines of Zimbabwe 2024 annual conference held in Victoria Falls on Thursday, RBZ governor John Mushayavanhu said the central bank would rather introduce more of the smaller denominations to address the shortage of change. Said Mushayavanhu (via NewsDay):
Since we introduced the ZiG, the economy has continued to grow across all sectors and we have not seen any negative results or disruptions.
We have introduced most of the cash denominations that we said we were going to. We have got ZiG1, ZiG2, ZiG5, ZiG10 and ZiG20 in circulation now.
We are going to put more of the smaller denominations because we want to make sure that the problem of change is immediately alleviated.
We have been very shy when it comes to introducing bigger denominations because psychologically, these denominations are inflationary. We do not see a reason to introduce the ZiG50 or ZiG200.
We have them, we have printed them, but it will take a bit of time before we put them on the market.
ZiG notes and coins remain scarce in the market because they are not readily available through banks. These shortages are hurting various sectors, including transport, supermarkets, and the informal market.
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