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Chris Ndlovu Bond Notes Analysis
BOND notes should have been introduced a decade ago to save the country from externalisation of cash and the prevailing economic challenges. After so many negative comments regarding the introduction of bond notes, Zimbabweans are blinded by backyard economic commentators that have very little understanding of real practical economics.
The challenge in this country is that we have everybody turned into economic experts forgetting that the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) has its skilled team and that the coming of bond notes could not be done without intensive consultations.
Most people that are crying foul are the same individuals who have been abusing the free circulation of the US$ and are externalising the same. The same people are bent on criticising the government and accusing it of corruption and failure to deliver.
I feel the government should go ahead and implement the bond notes with no apology to anybody. Instead Zimbabwe should demand an apology from its detractors who are benefiting from the externalisation scam.
A plethora of benefits could be derived from bond notes when they come into circulation in October. Bonds notes are there to stem the illegal flight of hard earned foreign currency from Zimbabwe. Capital flight creates jobs for other countries that boost their economies with billions of dollars from Zimbabwe.
Bond notes will encourage domestic production of quality goods at low cost and enabling Zimbabwe to export its competitive quality goods and realise real balance of payments. This would boost growth in the agro-processing sector and restore the country as a regional industrial hub.
Bond notes will weed out fly-by- night businesses, which come to steal our resources in broad day light. The central bank will be able to prioritise what is necessary to be imported aligned to capital goods that contribute to employment creation.
With bond notes in place Zimbabwe will be able to forensically audit parastatals that were mandated to run efficiently, audit all imported machinery especially in the power generation sector to ascertain the return on investment in the billions that were spent to import such equipment.
Every million spent in the importation of new machinery and equipment should have a return on investment justification in the reduction of tariffs to the consumer. If the tariffs have not changed, after major investments in modern machinery or technologies, one wonders what happened to the quality of equipment and engineering recommendations.
The government should conduct extensive investigations of the “vocal detractors”, audit their assets, balance their earnings from externalised funds and reconcile their tax returns and declarations with Zimra.
The government will be shocked with what they will discover hidden under the carpets in the pretext of blame game on the central bank. Based on meta-data, unstructured data and financial histograms of such companies and individuals, it is possible to uncover the masks that they are wearing in the financial hooliganism of blaming our government.
From an ICT point of view it is possible to track all funds that were illegally transferred and hidden somewhere outside the country. Our government can successfully trace, track and bring back Zimbabwean funds held in foreign bank accounts. What used to take years or months to do in locating such funds, with available technology in our fingertips, will take government a matter of days or weeks to smoke out such funds and repatriate them to Zimbabwe legitimately.
It is possible for Zimra to collect tenfold the current target that is received in the state coffers. The government will be able to let the world know, who the culprits are and their counterparts in foreign countries.
For many a layman it is dangerous to follow dust without knowing what’s causing the dust of negativity over the introduction of the bond notes and protection of our economy. Technology is available at our fingertips to help our government set up a fusion financial investigation unit (FIU) to track all these illegal dealings and repatriate all the resources stolen from this country.
This is not fairy tales or fiction. It’s real, it only takes the government to agree to act and put into place a dedicated team and the system quickly mobilised and ignited into motion.
The government should set up a financial electronic signal intelligence fusion centre to monitor all suspicious bank transactions. To aggregate all suspected individuals accounts and companies, reconciling with foreign countries FIUs to ascertain the source of funds.
This will help the government detect any possible tax evasion and declaration of specific individual or company assets. With the usage of data mining it is possible to track and trail all suspicious money transfers to the final destination. The usage of individual account histogram will help the investigators trace the source of funds and their destination.
Any illegal funds will be requested from the hosting countries to repatriated into the country. Again this is technology that is resident on our fingertips ready for implementation.
Current technology can track and detect such funds no matter the timeframe. The objective is to prove our government correct by nailing the culprits that hide under the pretext that the President has failed to govern.
What is exciting is that since the government announced the introduction of the bond notes, the same persons have started moving their funds from one account to the other. It’s too late for them because the financial transaction monitoring systems anywhere in the world have been activated to alert authorities how such funds have been moving from one transaction to another.
All fraudsters are flying in the air and will easily be tracked down and government identifies them by their transactions and notifies Zimra to audit the sources of funds, reconcile with their tax returns.
It is time we all fixed our country and follow the vision of our President who has had sleepless nights fighting an endless war to help Zimbabweans realise their God-given destiny of prosperity in the midst of irreconcilable negativity.
*Chris Ndlovu is a specialist in government ICT monitoring systems & Critical Public Infrastructure Protection Government Business. He is the managing director of Duodecimar Technologies PL. Feedback on 0776 574 356 – email [email protected]
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