#2 Inflation in Zimbabwe continues.

Hi everyone! Welcome to "This is Zvakanaka Zimbabwe Volunteer Life” podcast!

I'm Miyu and start living here in Zimbabwe for two years volunteer program of Japanese foreign ministry.

Today I want to talk about inflation in Zimbabwe, which has been going on for several years.

You have probably heard about hyperinflation here in Zimbabwe.
It started in 2007, and peak month of inflation rate is estimated at 79.6 billion percent month-on-month, 89.7 sextillion percent year-on-year in 2008.
This resulted in US$1 becoming equivalent to Z$ 2.62 bilion

In April 2009, Zimbabwe stopped printing its currency that has been hyper inflated. At that time, the government permitted the use of the U.S. dollar.

In June 2019, the Zimbabwean government announced the reintroduction of the Real Time Gross Settlement dollar (RTGS), which is new money here, people call it "bond" because their old money is bond.

Currently, both USD and RTGS are available, but the RTGS dollar is still inflating at a high rate. I couldn't believe that one bond was equal to one US dollar in 2019 when RTGS started because one US dollar is now equal to 770 bonds today. In January last year, one U.S. dollar was worth 110 bonds. This means that RTGS values have fallen by one-seventh over the last year, which is a crazy number! Normally people get paid in RTGS, and the amount of salary doesn't change, so their lives get harder and harder everyday.

People want dollars as the value of the RTGS continues to diminish. Foreigners like me tend to use U.S. dollars, and sometimes locals seem happy with our use of U.S. dollars. The one-dollar note (one dollar bill) is especially valuable because it is rare here and could be used for change.

There's a forecast that says inflation rates should cool down in 2023, but that's hard to believe. I don't think I should trade a large amount of US dollars to RTGS here.

I do hope that inflation in this country will subside a little, and that the economy will improve.

Thank you for listening to today's episode, and see you in the next podcast!
Tonana, Bye!