Zimbabwe consigns worthless currency to scrapheap
ZIMBABWEANS will start exchanging “quadrillions” of local dollars for a few US dollars this week as President Robert Mugabe’s government discards its virtually worthless national currency.
The country started using foreign currencies such as the US dollar and the rand in 2009 after the Zimbabwean dollar was ruined by hyperinflation, which hit 500 billion percent in 2008.
At the height of Zimbabwe’s economic crisis in 2008, Zimbabweans had to carry plastic bags bulging with banknotes to buy basic goods such as bread and milk. Prices rose at least twice a day.
From tomorrow, customers who had held Zimbabwean dollar accounts before March 2009 could approach their banks to convert their Zimbabwean dollar balance into dollars, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor John Mangudya said in a statement this week.
The process will legally end the local currency.
Zimbabweans have until September to turn in their old banknotes, which some people sell as souvenirs to tourists.
Bank accounts with balances of up to 175-quadrillion Zimbabwean dollars will be paid $5. Those with balances above 175-quadrillion dollars will be paid at an exchange rate of $1 to 35-quadrillion Zimbabwean dollars.
The highest — and last — banknote to be printed by the country’s central bank, in 2008, was 100-trillion Zimbabwean dollars.
It was not enough to ride a public bus to work for a week.
The bank said customers who BUS FARE: Zimbabwean dollars, including this, the last denomination to be printed by the central bank, are to be scrapped still had stashes of old Zimbabwean dollar notes could go to any bank and get $1 for every 250-trillion they held.
That means a holder of a 100-trillion bank note will get 40c tomorrow. The central bank has set aside $20-million to pay Zimbabwean dollar currency holders. —