The Zim dollar further depreciated to $63.74 per US dollar from $57.36 last week after today’s foreign currency auction. The highest bid was $92 and the lowest was $37.82. Last week’s official rate was $57.36 per dollar
The black market rate for the Zim dollar against the US dollar is unknown at the moment following a directive by the central bank to suspend agent lines.
However, Zippit and swipe transactions are still active on the black market with rates starting at $99 to US$1.
The new rate follows today’s Foreign Exchange Auction Trading system by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ). The system came into effect last Tuesday.
You can check the results of this week’s forex auction below:
Applications worth US$16.32 million were allotted from bids for US$18.95 million.
Under auction rules successful bidders have to pay the rate they offer, so the high bidder will pay almost twice as much for their US dollars as the weighted average and possibly four times as much as a successful low bidder.
The forex auction system has been met with mixed reviews with some analysts stating it is ill-advised whilst others believe it will foster economic growth.
The forex trading system has previously failed and was abandoned in 2005 when then central bank governor Gideon Gono replaced it with the exchange rate float.
This week’s forex auction comes at a time when the RBZ issued a follow-up statement to one made by Nick Mangwana last Friday. The statement made by Mangwana sought to totally ban mobile money platforms.
Mobile money operators suspended agent lines and converted merchant lines into one-way channels, allowing payments to come in while cashing out is to be made through a bank in compliance with the RBZ directive.
RBZ said genuine individual transactions would be processed normally. Merchant lines are now one way, allowing incoming transactions, but merchants would then be required to move their money to their bank accounts to make almost all payments from the bank accounts rather than from their mobile wallets.