The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) says that it’s troubled by agents selling cash (through charging higher charges) and its working on a solution to curb this practice. According to The Herald’s report, RBZ Head of Oversight and Risk Management Douglas Muranda said:
The issue of high (cash out) charges is giving us headaches too.
It’s illegal and it’s not allowed.
We hope the situation would be addressed soon, but we are grappling with it.
The illegality of this practice has never been ambiguous. However, it’s what’s being currently done by the RBZ to curb the selling of cash by mobile money agents that matters most and that’s what we now want to hear. The same goes for EcoCash- we would want to know what it’s doing to solve the problem instead of just issuing notices advising customers to report agents charging premiums.
RBZ is also advising victims who are charged high mobile money/EcoCash charges to report the mobile money agents to the Financial Intelligence Unit, its department which deals with money-related crimes.
It’s an illegal practice and people can report businesses that put a percentage on cash out transactions to the RBZ department called Financial Intelligence Unit.
As it is, Financial Intelligence Unit has let us down. It’s failing to stem the dangerous black market so tell me, can we bank on it to solve the problem of high EcoCash charges?
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The pertinent questions are:
1. Why do people still need cash?
2. Why do those who demand cash payment demand cash payment?
3. Why is electronic money viewed differently in terms of value by Zimbabweans?
Let’s ask the why, peel the onion and identify the root cause of the issue. Without identifying this, we will go round in circles blaming other entities who probably are just part of wider set of issues.
A. Cash is not subject to 2% tax.
B. Black market forex is cheaper in cash.
C. Cash is not traceable like a bank or EcoCash transactions.
All those answers apply equally to the posed questions.
There’s no onion to be peeled, some of it is just common sense. No need to establish a commission of enquiry.
True, and we as the public, dont know the direction from which the mesiah will come. Since Econet is a beneficiary and the government itself. We will continue to suffer, no one is coming for our rescue.
The government has given more room for informal traders as compared to the formal traders
The problem is an acute cash shortage. The rest are symptoms, market forces will award the highest bidder when there are shortages.
1. This started when the cash ran into scarcity, why can’t the RBZ solve the problem at hand on it’s own?
2. This was then sped up when the gvt introduced a 2cents per dollar tax, this actually made the RTGS more expensive than using cash as compared to Mugabe regime of 5cents per transaction, so buying Forex or even transacting with cash became cheaper so everyone is now looking for cash.
3. Right now if you go to the shops, there are two different prices, the lower one is for cash and that makes people looking for cash on the black market since it’s no longer found from the banks.
4. If Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe makes cash available from every bank, no one will be stupid enough to go and buy cash from those agents.
5. It’s not only the agents who are selling cash, agents are even buying cash from the individuals and later resale it to those who are in need of it, so we are not supposed to blame the agents, but the problem is coming from the topper controllers, agents are only dancing according to the music played.
It is only in zimbabwe where you buy your own money in your country. Funny enough that money that you buy no one else can buy it on international markets. You can not find money in the bank but in the streets. We buy our money so that we can buy in our own country. Serious????