FIU cracks down on exchange rate manipulation

The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) is setting its sights on a new target to boost acceptance of Zimbabwe’s currency, the ZiG. After focusing on larger businesses, the FIU recognises informal shops’ role in the economy and acknowledges past neglect of these stakeholders. In this interview with The Financial Gazette’s Almot Maqolo (AM) FIU director-general Oliver Chiperesa (OC) emphasises the need for education and engagement, highlighting the willingness of informal retailers to make the ZiG work.

AM: What were the key takeaways from your meeting with retailers this week?
OC: One of the key things that I learnt is that sometimes there is only a lack of education, which makes people not comply. Engaging with stakeholders from the informal sector, especially from the tuck-shops downtown, that is a fact; they are just as willing as everybody else to see our ZiG currency work and in the past, we probably have not engaged them enough. We have tended to focus more on bigger formal shops, but we have quite a lot of big ideas; we have got suggestions and they have shared with us some of the obstacles that have made it difficult for them in the past to comply.
Even with those obstacles, I think we can address them together, and one of the key factors that I have seen come out is that some of the stakeholders were afraid that if they accumulate a lot of ZiG, we will not accept it. They asked: Where are we going to put it? Because when we try to go and stock from the suppliers, the suppliers are not accepting the ZiG.
So, I think that point makes us engage with the manufacturers and suppliers even more vigorously to let them see how they can also help our stakeholders downtown. So, I got quite a few very important things that we can take up with other stakeholders like the central bank and the minister of Finance to improve the sit