Chronicle Editor
The Zimbabwe Gold (ZiG) has performed really well since its introduction in early April. It has been trading stable against the US$ at around ZiG13,5.
That has inspired a good deal of public confidence in it. One can have millions of it in the bank and still sleep comfortably in the confidence that it will maintain its value tomorrow.
But there remains a tiny minority which has kept a dangerous fixation with the US$ especially. As soon as they get any money in any other currency, the first thing they do it to spin it into the US$. Such activities undermine the national currency.
We see much cheek, brazenness, in 50 companies that, after winning Government contracts and getting paid for the work they did, proceeded to use that money to engage in criminality by channelling it to the black market for foreign currency. These are legitimate companies which demonstrated to the Government that they can partner with it to deliver public services, got jobs to do and were paid in their national currency yet used the same money to attack that currency. That doesn’t make any sense at all.
We are glad that authorities have come down hard on the 50 companies by not just blacklisting them for their criminality but by also publicly naming and shaming them and their directors as we saw in these pages yesterday.
This means that the so named and shamed companies cannot win any government contracts in future. Given that government is the biggest customer in our country as elsewhere, the 50 companies have lost much business.
However, naming and shaming may not be enough. We have seen some company directors appearing in court for illegal currency deals. A few have appeared in court after their companies were exposed for using black market rates in their pricing.
This is a much more severe punishment. It sends a strong message that dabbling in the illegal currency market is an offence and punishment does not end with a company being blacklisted, named and shamed. It sends the message that persons who authorised their companies to participate in the parallel market will bear the consequences of their activities at a personal level.
As we condemn the 50 blacklisted companies and their publicly named and shamed directors, we would want to urge the banking sector to play a more complementary role by making sure that deserving cases that need foreign currency and place formal applications for it, get it timeously.
By doing so, the system would enable companies loaded with ZiG but lacking foreign currency; to be able to access it at their bank to import whatever item they legitimately need for their businesses to run smoothly.
Online Reporter
Londile Moyo