eBusiness Weekly
Business Writer
As a major confidence booster, the Reserve of Bank of Zimbabwe will put in place an independent certification mechanism for the soon-to-be-introduced Zimbabwe Gold,
The Zimbabwe Gold (ZiG) is a phase for transacting Gold Backed Digital Tokens (GBDT) that were put in place for value preservation purposes.
ZiG is meant to be an additional payment method alongside existing payment platforms such as the Zimbabwe dollar as well as the US dollar among other currencies.
According to the central bank, ZiG will complement the local currency and foreign currency in facilitating domestic transactions in a more certain and predictable manner given the stability of the international gold price.
However, trust issues threatened to derail the uptake of GBDT and by extension ZiG amid fears that there was no guarantee that the apex bank would not print more than the available gold.
The central bank has been accused of excessive printing of the local currency leading to its near collapse in terms of value.
Even under dollarisation, the central bank reportedly issued more US dollar payments than what the economy was generating again leading to legacy debts and overvalued account balances.
Some blame the collapse of dollarisation on fake dollars that were now in the system as alluded to by Finance and Investment Promotion Minister Mthuli Ncube in 2020 when he said Zimbabwe created United States dollars through borrowing from the central bank and issuance of Treasury Bills to cover the indebtedness of state-owned entities.
But as a confidence booster, the central bank is set to allow independent certification of the available ZiG.
‘To engender confidence in ZiG, an independent certification mechanism will be put in place to reassure the public of the availability and adequacy of the gold to back ZiG,” reads part of a press statement released by the RBZ detailing resolutions of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting held on September 26, 2023.
As at September 19, 332 536 636 milligrams of GBDT had been sold to individuals and institutions.
The MPC also affirmed its strong commitment to maintaining the current tight monetary policy stance and has since kept its Bank Policy rate at 150 percent and its Medium Term Accommodation lending facility at 75 percent per annum.
