Zimbabwe’s central bank says no plan to ‘raid’ forex accounts

Bloomberg

Zimbabwe’s central bank said it has “no reason or appetite to raid” foreign-exchange accounts and denied allegations from the country’s largest industry lobby group of US dollars being raided and a bank run.
The Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries in a position paper had asked the central bank to dump its weekly foreign currency auction and also highlighted the growing use of US dollars in most transactions, which undermines the use of the Zimbabwean dollar. The lobby group also referred to the “raiding” of foreign currency accounts.
“The impressions depicted therein are unfortunate and uncalled for as they have the potential of destabilising financial markets and economic stability of the country,” John Mangudya, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor, said in an emailed statement.
The central bank won’t suspend the weekly foreign currency auction as requested by the lobby group as this will lead to a shortage of goods and stoke inflation, Mangudya said.
“The government and the bank will pursue an orderly de-dollarization process and hence it is false that a mono-currency system is now in place,” he said.
The official exchange rate of $155.14 Zimbabwean dollars per US dollar lags behind the parallel market exchange rate of Z$360 per US dollar, according to ZimPriceCheck.com, a website that tracks both official and unofficial market rates.
Old Mutual’s unit in Zimbabwe in its quarterly economic brief said that dollarization is inevitable, as the official exchange rate is being sidelined in favour of the growing and divergent parallel market rates.