Zimbabwe will have a new currency in the next two weeks as part of ongoing efforts to address a shortage of cash that has gripped the southern African country since 2016, the central bank announced on Tuesday.
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor John Mangudya said the new currency would initially be introduced in denominations of $2 and $5 coins.
“There will also be the note versions of these two denominations. However, they will not be bond notes but will be equivalent to the bond notes,” Mangudya told journalists following a Monetary Policy Committee meeting in Harare.
The bond note is a free-falling local currency that has been in circulation since November 2016.
However, the currency has been in short supply since its introduction, prompting the RBZ to introduce earlier this year a virtual currency called Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) dollar to operate alongside the bond note.
The RTGS dollars are electronic dollars that only reflect in depositors’ bank accounts.
According to Mangudya, the RBZ would gradually exchange the RTGS dollars in people’s bank accounts with physical cash.
He however did not say what the name of the new currency will be.
JN/APA