No Need to Panic Over Bond Notes

It is obvious that the largest single cause of the banknote shortage in Zimbabwe at the moment is the desire by many to keep their cash at home in the form of banknotes, rather than in a bank account where it is a lot safer. 

Some reasons are rational. Everyone requires some of their dollars in banknotes and if everyone else has lost their reason and has caused an artificial shortage, then there are good reasons to ensure you get your share. This makes things worse, but is not necessarily wrong or stupid.

There are less rational reasons. The proposed launch of the bond notes was, in retrospect, explained very badly. What is obvious to smart economists in the higher echelons of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, the Finance Ministry and even the IMF office in Zimbabwe, is not so obvious to the average Zimbabwean and most people misunderstood what was intended and those recalling the nightmares of hyperinflation were suspicious and scared.

Most people think cash is banknotes, while bankers and economists know that virtually all the world's cash is in fact, in the form of entries in databases in banks. But that confusion can mean communication problems.

No Need to Panic Over Bond Notes

The fears are groundless, but it has taken the RBZ some time to carefully explain just what the bond notes are, and are not, and to list the safeguards, the most important of which so far as the average Zimbabwean is concerned is that the IMF will be monitoring the whole process at a foreign print works.

And some reasons are immoral. There are those who want to bypass capital export controls; there are those who want to smuggle in imports; and there are those who find piles of banknotes a simple way of laundering criminal gains. It was to curb these transactions that the RBZ thought up bond notes in the first place.

No one is going to keep these under the mattress, smuggle them across borders or do much more than get them back into a bank account where they transform into US dollars once again. As we have noted, bond notes are far more like a Zimswitch card than a banknote, something with no intrinsic value, but simply a way of moving US dollars between bank accounts.

Of course, it is theoretically possible to avoid using any banknotes when making transactions, that is transferring US dollars from your bank account to the US dollar account of the person selling the goods or services. And the RBZ is very keen on moving more fully to a plastic economy.

But there are practical limits, mainly the dearth of POS machines, or swipe machines as they are colloquially known, outside major retailers and the costs of these transactions is prohibitive. The RBZ needs to address, urgently, both problems and ensure that the formal sector at least can be largely plastic and that the costs of using plastic are no more than the costs banks charge to dispense banknotes from ATMs. Municipalities, service stations and medical service providers need to be top of the list for swipe machines, but shops too need one as soon as possible.

That still means people require banknotes for dealings within the informal sector, and even there the growing provision of mobile phone wallets does help, although people require to load wallets with banknotes and at some point someone must take money out in banknotes. But in theory fewer are needed. But buying a newspaper, a bottle of water or a haircut will probably always require notes and coins.

We understand the frustration faced by the RBZ and the Finance Ministry over what seems to them to be a gross overreaction driven by ignorance, fears and lies to a bright idea that will ensure that a US dollar loan does not disappear over our borders yet will have proper value and have the side effect of helping ameliorate the shortage of lower value banknotes.

They are now addressing the communication problems and will need to continue doing so. Bankers and ordinary people rarely think alike.

 Editorial