“Our position was that the bond note has failed therefore let us randalise. The rationale of demanding that we adopt the rand was that it is an weaker currency compared to USD but stable and we have many commonalities in trading with the SA economy. (probably at the moment trading at par with the bond),” Moyo said.
“Business then said no let us give government time and business said they have stock at the moment that they can not dispose overnight.(probably worried about the 2009 experience when we switched from Zim dollar to USD overnight). Some wanted time to build reserves in foreign currency while some have no capacity to earn in foreign currency.”
“We then said; “business if you want to give gvt time to stabilize then that is fine but meanwhile you give us back what we lost through SI 142. And you can only give us back by indexing our USD salaries to the interbank exchange rate prevailing at the moment. You continue to link your prices to the exchange rate and that should apply to wages and salaries as well.”
Moyo said to citizens surprise business don’t want people to link their USD salaries to the exchange rate as they do with their goods and services.
“Three days of hard negotiations could not break the impasse. Government created this mess and they have to sort it out. In the middle of the night and without consulting anyone they promulgated SI 142 that turned our USD denominated salaries into bond notes at 1:1. The market rejected this artificial value given to the bond note and government was forced to liberalise. All hell broke loose and workers lost their purchasing power when business pegged goods and services on the runaway exchange rate while wages and salaries remained stagnant,” Moyo said.
“If government fails to clean their mess then workers have to push back and recover their losses.”
