Africa-Press – Zimbabwe. By Alois Vinga
THE Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has increased the US$ Statutory reserve requirement to 15% in a move experts say is tilted towards promoting the usage of the ZWL.
Official records show that the economy is increasingly using the US$ with the recent Monetary Policy Statement (MPS) indicating that foreign currency-denominated loans constituted 94% of the banking sector’s loan books.
But in its meeting held this week, the RBZ MPC effected a new policy directive which will see the US$ Statutory Reserves requirements going up.
“The MPC opted in favour of standardizing the statutory reserve requirements for both foreign and local currency deposits at 15% and for savings and time deposits at 5%,” RBZ governor John Mangudya said in a statement.
A statutory reserve is the money that banks deposit with the central bank for every dollar deposited by their clients as a buffer against uncertainties.
Prior to the initiative, the US$ threshold was at 10% while the ZW$ was at 15%.
Market watchers believe that the initiative is aimed at curtailing the rapid extension of loans by banks in US$ while effectively promoting the wider usage of the ZWL.
The central bank also resolved to maintain the bank policy rate at 150% per annum and retain the Medium Term Accommodation lending facility at 75% per annum.
“The MPC was pleased with the strong uptake of Gold Backed Digital Tokens (GBDT) for value preservation purposes, which stood at 332 536 636 milligrams as at 19 September 2023.
“The bank will expedite the phase for transacting in GBDT, styled Zimbabwe Gold (ZiG) as an additional payment method alongside existing payment platforms,” said Mangudya.
He underscored that 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 and added that 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.
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