It seems the 25 cent bond coins have reached their end of life. We started receiving reports that businesses and individuals were rejecting these coins early last week and decided to investigate.
We went out with our coins to various vendor stalls and grocery shops and each time the coins were firmly rejected and we had to walk away empty-handed. Even vendors at Mbare Musika who are not normally choosey wouldn’t accept it. One vendor summed it all for us:
Iyi haitengi iyi mukoma. Nepava nemaprices tinenge tichitoda masaga kuti tiitakure saka hapana hapana. Manje manje kana 50 cents tinenge takutoiramba futi. Haitenge kana maputi.
[ We no longer accept that coin, given the inflation rate we would need sacks to haul our sales receipts around. To prevent problems we have just stopped accepting that coin. Soon we won’t be accepting the 50 cents coin as well.]
A vendor who explained it to us.
This means that the 25 cents coin is following the 1 cent ( this one died in its crib) and the 10 cents coin to the graveyard. This comes at a time when the government is obstinately unleashing the $2 bond coin upon the populace today as well as small denominations of $2 and $5 new Zimbabwean dollar currency.
The government has come up with all sorts of excuses for printing such low denominations. One reason has been to make it uneconomic to create counterfeit currency another has been a psychological attempt to reassure the public that the government is not on a money printing spree.
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