President Mnangagwa has granted permission for locals with free funds to pay for emergency passports in foreign currency.
The regulations, which may be cited as the Exchange Control (Exclusive Use of Zimbabwe Dollar for Domestic Transactions) (Amendment) Regulations, 2020 (No. 1) were gazetted in Statutory Instrument 61 of 2020, which was published in yesterday’s Government Gazette.
“The Exchange Control (Exclusive Use of Zimbabwe Dollar for Domestic Transactions) Regulations, 2019, is published in Statutory Instrument 212 of 2019, is amended in Section 4 (“Transactions Excluded from Scope of “Domestic Transactions”) by the insertion of the following paragraph after paragraph (f).
“(g) payment for emergency passports, that is the payment out of free funds (as defined in Section 2 of the Exchange Control Regulations, 1996) of any fee for the issuance of a passport within twenty-four hours of the fulfilment of the requirements for such issuance by the person in whose name passport is to be issued,” read the Gazette.
Prior to the latest Statutory Instrument, only Zimbabweans living in the Diaspora enjoyed that privilege after Government late last year authorised the Civil Registry Department to charge them US$318 for passports.
Government last month increased fees for an ordinary passport from $53 to $150 while an emergency passport now costs $600, up from $253.
The fee hike was aimed at clearing the backlog of 400 000 passports in the next six months and cater for new applicants. – Herald
