The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has issued out a statement refuting claims doing rounds on social media that they are going to be liberalising the interbank rate. For the past six months, the interbank rate has been nothing but a number as the formal market dried up with traders preferring to sell their hard-earned forex on the black market instead.

This is all the RBZ’s false of course. You see the interbank rate stopped being a poor imitation of the black market rate when the governor decided to tightly control the rate.

PRESS STATEMENT
PRESS STATEMENT ON THE LIBERALIZATION OF
FOREIGN EXCHANGE MARKET
The Bank would like to advise the public to disregard, with the
contempt it deserves, the false and mischievous article circulating on social media suggesting that the Bank has devalued the local currency. The intention of such disinformation is to cause panic and despondency, and ultimately destabilize the country’s foreign exchange markets through manipulation of the exchange rate.

We wish to advise the public that, consistent with the Monetary
Policy Committee announcement on 19 November 2019, the Bank is enhancing the Reuters foreign exchange trading system to ensure efficiency and effectiveness in the allocation of foreign
exchange to the productive sectors and enhancing price discovery on the interbank market. Already, engagements have been done with Commercial Banks to ensure smooth implementation of this system. Currently, Banks are working on a user-test environment to enhance the efficiency of this foreign exchange trading system.
J P Mangudya
Governor
13 February 2020