Tsvangirai urges Mugabe to adopt SA Rand

Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party leader Morgan Tsvangirai has called on President Robert Mugabe's administration to adopt the South African rand as its major trading currency amid cash shortages in the country.

Zimbabwe introduced bond notes on Monday to avert a cash crisis that has resulted in the majority of Zimbabweans failing to access their cash from local banks.

The former prime  minister slammed the country's central bank for introducing the bond notes saying they were not the solution to the country's liquidity problems.

The country's central bank governor John Mangudya said the bond notes were backed by a $200m Africa Export Import Bank loan facility.

The bond notes have failed to ease bank queues amid reports that the surrogate currency is in short supply.

Tsvangirai urged the government to open negotiations with Pretoria and adopt the Rand as a major currency ahead of the US dollar because Zimbabwe trades more with South Africa compared to the USA.

"We can all be proud to be Zimbabweans with our own dollar but it does not mean anything if it's worth nothing. Time has now come to bring to the attention of the Zanu-PF government that all its policies are short-lived and bringing these bond notes that I equate to bond paper is suicidal; this is the last nail on the country's economy," added the former PM.

However, Zimbabwe's finance minister, Patrick Chinamasa, told News24 that Harare would maintain the status quo.

"We adopted the multi-currency regime and the rand is part of the currencies that we are using and people have a choice to use the rand or the US dollar or any other currency," said the finance chief.