Staff Reporter

Businesses have expressed optimism that the policy interventions instituted by the Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Professor Mthuli Ncube will go a long way in calming down the turbulent economy.

Key among the interventions was the scrapping of import duty on basic commodities, a 15% foreign currency surrender requirement on domestic sales and the fine tuning of foreign exchange market.

Speaking to this publication yesterday, business analyst Tafara Chisingarambwi said the policy interventions announced by Government would help in stabilizing the economy.

 “The parallel market activities have fueled the depreciation of the local currency and inflationary pressures. The policy interventions by the Government will surely go a long way in calming the turbulent economy. Commendably, the interventions are focused on the formal business sector, which seems to bear the biggest brunt of market volatilities. The removal of import restrictions and duties was necessary to restore the competitiveness of formal business that is currently affected by smugglers, mostly in the informal sector. Importantly the interventions will result in increased competition mainly on pricing and quality, all to the benefit of final consumer,” said Chisingarambwi.

The Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) committee chairman, Jimmy Psillos also commended the Government policy interventions and said that it would result in a rapid stabilization of the local currency on the parallel market. He expected the stabilization to culminate into convergence between the official and parallel market to less than 10% by mid-June.

Additionally, Psillos commended Government’s intention to fine-tune the foreign currency exchange rate, saying that it was long overdue. He noted the foreign currency backlog was beginning to resurface because the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) was allocating more money than it had in its coffers.

Psillos further suggested that Government should temporarily hold payments to contractors in order to suppress excess liquidity in the market which has fueled exchange rate on the parallel market.

Meanwhile, Harare residents confided in this publication that the Government was doing everything possible to revive the economy through the enactment of laws and policies that support local producers and linking them to retailers.