“The ink has barely dried on Zimbabwe’s new currency, Zimbabwe Gold, or ZiG, when rumors of its imminent collapse are already rife.” The formula of the South African economic weekly Financial Mail summarizes the erratic beginnings of ZiG. Deployed on April 5 in the hope of ending Zimbabwe’s monetary chaos, the new currency has already lost more than 40% of its value on the black market.
The reason is the total lack of confidence of the population in this new local currency, the sixth in ten years. Before the creation of ZiG, Zimbabwe notably knew the Zimbabwean dollar and “bond notes”. Introduced in 2019, the Zimbabwean dollar is now dead and buried, having lost 80% of its value since the start of the year, recalls the Financial Mail. With ZiG, the government hopes to start from scratch and put an end to inflation, but things are not that simple.
Indeed, the country has bitter memories of previous experiences and the executive’s bad habit of printing money beyond what its coffers can guarantee. The value of ZiG is thus supposed to be guaranteed by the country’s reserves of gold, precious metals and foreign currencies. “We will not print money without reserves behind it”, promised the governor of
