And Zera has also implied it will be fairly sparing with forex licences looking at the geographical spread of forex stations. The biggest downside to mass use of forex stations is that forex fuel attracts higher excise duty, so even at interbank rates is significantly more expensive than fuel in the general market. At black market rates, a motorist using mobile money to buy US dollar banknotes to buy forex fuel will be paying in the end almost exactly twice the price of general Zimdollar fuel. He said the call for people with free funds to import fuel and sell in forex does not signal that de-dollarisation had failed. “Right now, it’s too early to expect everyone to be using the local currency after 10 years in dollarisation,” he said.

Source: The Local February 23, 2020 22:07 UTC