Zimbabwe’s commercial banks reopened trading a new currency on Friday, with queues outside appearing to be longer than usuaL after the central bank devalued the country’s bond note currency.
Zimbabwe’s central bank announced on Wednesday that it would scrap the peg between its quasi-currency bond note and the U.S. dollar, creating a new currency from the bond notes and national electronic dollars that will be known as RTGS dollars.
Zimbabwe adopted the dollar in 2009 but, as a chronic hard currency shortage worsened, introduced a parallel system of bond notes that it pegged at 1:1 to the U.S. currency.
The bond notes and electronic dollars, locked in individuals’ accounts for months due to a lack of cash, will be merged into the separate RTGS – or real-time gross settlement – currency, according to the central bank.
Other members of the public should, in theory, be able to go to banks next week and buy U.S. dollars with bond notes or electronic dollars.
