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Zim wants currency
13/02/2004 19:45 - (SA)
Harare - Zimbabwe's central bank is considering launching a campaign to persuade what it believes is 3.5 million Zimbabweans working abroad to send home some of their foreign currency earnings.
Officials say the money should be sent back "through formal channels".
Thousands of Zimbabweans have fled political repression and economic disaster in the last four years and migrated abroad from where they send money home to their struggling families. However, they have it changed into Zimbabwean currency through the lucrative, semi-official, black market rather than at the much lower official exchange rate.
The state-controlled daily Herald newspaper said the central bank planned "to liaise with Zimbabweans in the Diaspora on the need to repatriate their earnings through the formal channels".
"We are launching an education and information drive on the opportunities we are creating," said Eric Bloch, an independent economist who heads an advisory committee to the central bank on foreign exchange.
He said the committee estimated that 3.5 million Zimbabweans were living abroad, 1.2 million of them in South Africa, 1.1-million in Britain -- 300 000 of whom were "legal" -- and 100 000 each in Australia and New Zealand.
Huge amounts mentioned
If the drive worked, it was estimated it could attract between US$250m and US$400m annually, he said.
The figures are the first official estimates of the dramatic exodus of Zimbabweans since 2000 when President Robert Mugabe unleashed a campaign of violent seizures of white-owned land and of brutal intimidation of his opponents.
However, experts expressed serious doubts that so many people could possibly have migrated.
Bloch responded that his committee had "a very extensive network."
In the last four years, the economy has contracted by 40% and inflation has risen to 623%, driving unemployment to levels of over 80%.
Famine, now entering its third year with 7.5 million people estimated to be starving, has further accelerated the exodus.
In the last two months, new central bank chief Gideon Gono has introduced sweeping changes in the financial sector, clamping down on corruption and wild speculation and starting foreign currency auctions in a partial devaluation of the national currency.
"The rate we offer is going to have to be close to what they are getting through other channels," Bloch said.
The central bank was also considering an amnesty for Zimbabweans with reserves of foreign currency abroad.
Bloch said his committee's proposals were still to be approved by the central bank. "I can't go too public now," he said.
- SAPA
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