With cash becoming ever more difficult to access in Zimbabwe, retailers in major industries are introducing measures to ensure that they continue supplying consumers with much needed products. With rumours of a looming fuel crisis, members of the public are uncertain as to how it will play out. Some service stations have been “refusing” to take mobile payments and they seemingly are more willing to take payment in cash. The preference for cash seems to be stemming from difficulty in making foreign payments through transfers. Notices offering discounts on cash payments have been spotted at some Trek service stations in Harare, suggesting that purchasing fuel using mobile money now costs more than it would if one had cash. The RBZ has said that fuel companies are at the top of the import priority list and they receive foreign payments on a weekly basis to ensure that the nation doesn’t run out of the precious commodity. After reports which claimed that the RBZ had a meeting with fuel suppliers to discuss an impending fuel crisis, the RBZ said in a statement “there was no meeting held between fuel suppliers and the Reserve Bank on Friday last week. Fuel companies are being allocated foreign exchange on weekly basis to meet their monthly requirement of $50 million”, according to the Herald.
Some shops in the capital have also displayed notices stating that cooking oil is now available for purchase using cash only. This move by the shops suggest that they are facing problems in acquiring cooking oil from suppliers via the RTGS systems. Cooking oil is one of the products covered by the Statutory Instrument (SI) 106 of 2016 by government in its bid to promote local industries. Mahommed Mussa, Choppies and Food World are among some of the supermarkets that are selling cooking oil on a cash only basis. Analysts have suggested that the cooking oil suppliers are only taking cash and in turn, supermarkets are forced to also demand cash only for the product. However, Oil Expressers’ Association of Zimbabwe representative and Pure Drop cooking oil, chief executive officer, Sylvester Mangani denied the claims and said , “There is no problem with the cooking oil sector and I think you should direct your questions to them (retailers). As long as they have our cooking oil, whatever they are doing with it, is something they can explain. If you go to OK or TM Pick N Pay they pay using the real time gross settlement (RTGS) system,” he said. “There are some retailers, who pay us in cash, but generally they pay using RTGS. We do accept RTGS payments. We encourage retailers to pay in cash because we can repatriate cash, but there is no pressure on them to do that.” (Newsday, November 23).
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