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Parliamentarians have summoned Finance minister Mthuli Ncube to explain what measures he was implementing to tame inflation and stabilise the free-falling Zimdollar.
The local currency, reintroduced in 2019, has been on a free-fall, pushing up the cost of living and piling more misery on long-suffering Zimbabweans.
The Zimbabwean dollar is currently trading at between $2 500 and $2 700 to the greenback at the black market where the majority of citizens get foreign currency.
In Parliament on Tuesday, legislators said Ncube had to be summoned to Parliament to explain.
Raising a point of national interest, Norton Legislator Temba Mliswa (Independent) said: “The current parallel market has gone up to $3 000 and the majority of our people have been affected.
“Can the Minister of Finance bring a supplementary budget with immediate effect as a result of rising inflation and a collapsing local currency?”
Harare East legislator Tendai Biti added: “I rise on the issue of illicit financial flows; 79% of our people are living in extreme poverty, surviving on less than US$1,25 a day yet this country is extremely rich.
“We have 64 minerals including lithium, gold and diamond but we have nothing to show for it. A billion dollars is lost illegally through smuggling.”
Qatar-based Al Jazeera recently exposed gold smuggling and money laundering in the country involving the country’s elite.
“Can the minister come before this House to lay a roadmap of how he is going to deal with illicit financial flows, runaway parallel market rate and a forensic audit for the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) because we cannot suffer from theresource curse because a few individuals have decided to steal from this country,” Biti said.
Speaker of Parliament Jacob Mudenda said: “The issue will be presented to the Minister of Finance.”
President Emmerson Mnangagwa has resisted growing calls to re-dollarise the economy as retailers among other serviceproviders including some government departments charge for their services exclusively in United States dollars.
Newsday