Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa has extended the use of foreign currency in settling domestic transactions and payment of goods and services until December 2030.
Mnangagwa made the declaration in a Statutory Instrument gazetted Friday, which overrides an earlier regulation that had set 2025 as the deadline for the multi-currency system.
“The provisions of the Schedule, in so far as they expressly or impliedly permit the settlement of any transaction or the payment for goods and services in foreign currency, shall, notwithstanding Statutory Instrument 142 of 2019, be valid until the 31st December 2030,” Mnangagwa said.
The 2025 deadline as well as recent official pronouncements on the impending return of the Zimbabwean dollar as the sole official currency, had brought uncertainty in the financial markets, leading many banks to suspend lending in foreign currency.
According to the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency, Zimbabwe’s multiple currency system is anchored by the U.S. dollar and nearly 80 percent of local transactions are in U.S. dollars.
“As Zimbabweans, we cannot afford to undertake our national development programs at a snail’s pace. Our country has already been robbed of time for development due to the 23 years of sanctions. We must never bury our heads in the sand,” Mnangagwa said in his opening address at the ruling ZANU-PF party’s Annual National People’s Conference in Gweru, Midlands Province.
Mnangagwa said Zimbabweans should never be discouraged by the ever-changing socio-economic and political challenges, but strive to advance national development through modernization and industrialization.
“The stage of our national development … requires us to be solution givers, not problem creators, towards proffering and implementing high-impact policies, projects and programs to address challenges facing our people. I expect that the resolutions of this important event of our party must drive production, productivity and a prosperous development trajectory for our nation,” he said.
