Financial Gazette (Harare)
9 September 2008
Harare — The Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) has called on the government to legalise purchases in foreign currency from designated shops, saying shoppers scouting for basic commodities in neighbouring countries were denying the country the opportunity to shore up its foreign exchange reserves by moving it outside the borders.
In a letter to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor Gideon Gono sent this week, CZI president Callisto Jokonya said the move would harness free funds for the benefit of the formal economy, currently hemorrhaging due to significant foreign currency shortages.
"The Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries appreciates the current policy that allows Zimbabweans to legally receive free funds from relatives and friends in the Diaspora through money transfer agencies and other authorised dealers.
"This has to some degree empowered some sections of the community that would otherwise be unable to access adequate basic goods and services for their families because of high prices that are beyond their reach.
"We note with great concern, however, that recipients of these free funds can virtually not legally buy anything in foreign currency locally.
"Instead they embark on expensive trips to neighbouring countries such as Botswana, South Africa, Moza-mbique and Zambia to buy goods that would sometimes have been exported from Zimbabwe, using the foreign currency accessed through our local transfer facilities," Jokonya said in the letter.
He said: "Where we used to have one company importing food we now instead have a big fraction of the country's 13 million people crossing our borders, and thus incurring huge transport costs, to neighbouring countries to import the food, resulting in the country losing scarce fuel and wasting crucial man hours necessary to sustain production."
All the resources used by locals in the foreign escapades were vital to the sustenance of local industry and commerce, he said.
He proposed the setting up of retail shops that would sell goods in foreign currency.
Such measures, he said, had been successfully implemented by Zimba-bwe's neighbours like Mozambique and Zambia, who set up retail outlets referred to as "diplomatic shops" from which all citizens with foreign currency could buy goods without the risk of breaking the law.
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