One US Dollar will get you One Million Zimbabwe Dollars. That is just ridiculous!! I checked the official bank rate about two to three weeks ago and it was ZW $30,000 to US$1. The official rate doesn’t really mean much for everyday people in Zimbabwe because you can’t get yourself any foreign currency at the bank and it doesn’t make sense to sell your forex to a bank when you can get more for your money on the street. People who do want to know where the bank rates stand are the black market dealers so that they can adjust their prices accordingly.
I can remember the days in the early to mid nineties when you could get the US Dollar for well under ZW $10. It was so readily available and you could pick up your foreign currency from the bank on the day that you ordered it. As the years went by and the economic and political situation got a little shaky it became harder and harder to get your hands on forex. The situation has only gotten worse as time has gone by. I was in Zimbabwe at the beginning of the year when US $1 would get you about ZW $15,000 to ZW $20,000 depending on where you changed your money. I would not have thought that it would reach the levels it has reached. The instability in the economy has made a lot of people very rich and very quick!!
One funny thing is that I kept quite a few notes, in particular the $10,000 bill that does not have a space between the first and second zero. I went on to sell a few of them on
eBay! for between US$15-50. A few people are selling an array of Zimbabwe Dollar notes and getting a whole lot more from them than they would get in Zimbabwe.
It is beyond me how the economic situation has reached the level it is currently at.
No comments yet.