eBusiness Weekly
Mamvura’s Market Minute
You don’t even need to be business to know that the biggest problem facing this country is forex. This has fed into the economy in a multitude of ways and created the multi-tier pricing system that we face today. Of course there is profiteering by some in business, but they did not create the problem. If forex was widely available as it had been from 2009-2014 there would be enough competition that prices for the same commodity would differ only be a few percent and would be around 40 percent lower than present, which is directly reflective of the premium on forex.
You do rather wish the government’s line on this would change. Instead of admitting the damage caused by government overspending, it’s business that is fingered for being the baddies.
This is where the multilaterals sigh and they are the organisations that could fix the problem fastest. But they are not going to lend one dollar of value against the debased dollar until government accepts this. The other theory is FDI, but that is not going to show up in a meaningful way until after the elections. How much investment do you really think will flow from the “firsts” in Davos?
The final way of mobilising forex in the fastest way possible is what comes in from the hard pressed diasporans (some mobile money transfer agencies already pay a “40 percent bonus”, so you know that money is already committed to matching an import . . . but the forex never hits the nostros!) or through the Embassies/NGOs.
These non-productive, consumptive and mostly pointless organisations are an excellent source of dollars and should be encouraged through being offered 24 hour registrations with five unquestioned two year work permits . . . but again, this is highly unlikely.
