Adriana Siwela, a 25-year-old college student in Harare, thought she could dash into a shop for a quick purchase of a US$2 packet of biscuits. But the cashiers sent her away. Her US$20 bill is considered “big money” in Zimbabwe these days – and big trouble for shops, which often cannot provide change for them.
She had to sprint out of the shop and into the car park, where a bevy of unlicensed currency traders offered to swap her U.S. money for a bundle of Zimbabwean bills, known as Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) dollars. And they would only exchange the money at the official rate of 115 to the dollar, far below the informal market rate.
“It´s a frustrating situation,” Ms. Siwela said. “A transaction of a minute swells to 10 minutes.”
Read more
She had to sprint out of the shop and into the car park, where a bevy of unlicensed currency traders offered to swap her U.S. money for a bundle of Zimbabwean bills, known as Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) dollars. And they would only exchange the money at the official rate of 115 to the dollar, far below the informal market rate.
“It´s a frustrating situation,” Ms. Siwela said. “A transaction of a minute swells to 10 minutes.”
Read more