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Zimbabwe’s central bank governor announced that he is removing 10 zeros from the country’s currency with effect from the 1st of August.

This did not come as a surprise at all, it was just a matter of when Reserve bank governor Mr Gono was going to remove these zeros from our now useless Zimbabwe Dollar. Exchanging at 1 British pound(£1) to 1.3 Trillion Zimbabwe dollars…..it was becoming very embarrassing even to mention these figures.

“The Zimbabwe dollar will be re-denominated by a factor of one to 10, which means we are removing 10 zeros from our monetary value.
Ten Billion(Zimbabwean) dollars today will be reduced to one dollar with effect from August 1,” Gono said in a television broadcast.

A new 500 dollar note will be introduced and the new currency will co-circulate together with the family of bearer cheques……which shall cease to be legal tender on the 31st of December.

Meanwhile President Mugabe has warned the country’s business sector to stop profiteering or face emergency measures.

“If you drive us more than you have done we will impose emergency measures, and we don’t want to place our country in a situation of emergency rules, they can be tough rules you know,” Mugabe said.

But will Gono’s policy of removing zeros from the currency solve the country’s cash problems? Gono has been introducing new bank notes about every month since last year in an effort to solve the cash problems affecting the country.

Just last week Zimbabwe introduced a new 100 billion note (not enough to buy a loaf of bread) which will now be equivalent to 100 dollars of the new currency.

The current government of Robert Mugabe is not capable of solving the current economic problems in Zimbabwe. The country suffers from the highest inflation rate in the world……estimated to be more than two million percent.
Critics blame these economic problems, food shortages and the current political crisis on Mugabe and his government’s economic mismanagement.

What’s your opinion on the current problems in Zimbabwe. Feel free to have your say by posting your comments.