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Harare - Zimbabwe's central bank said it is enforcing new
currency controls to stop the flight of cash from the broke economy.
The bank said in an order made available on Monday that
property sellers will receive only the first $50 000 of their price. The rest
will be held in a Reserve Bank account for a year, effectively making it an
involuntary loan to the cash-strapped state institution.
Since Zimbabwe abandoned its own currency in 2009 and
adopted the dollar as legal tender, property sales drained the formal economy
of cash. The bank said money sent out of the country weakened the nation's
ability to balance its books.
Zimbabwe has experienced economic problems and seen record
inflation since longtime ruler President Robert Mugabe ordered farmland
seizures in 2000.
The immediate effects of the controls mean sellers will
receive the balance of the total price in four tranches over one year with
interest of about 10%.
The change "enhances liquidity in the market" and does
not affect foreign property investors and sellers who can prove properties were
bought with hard currency brought into the country in the first place, the
Reserve Bank order said.
In 2009, Zimbabwe's coalition government cancelled stringent
hard currency controls imposed over years of socialist-style management since
independence in 1980. Those controls had led to an economic meltdown and record
inflation in the local currency over the last decade.
Harare economist John Robertson said many property sellers
were trying to get their money out of the country amid political and economic
uncertainty.
Hard currency investment has largely dried up as Mugabe's
party in a shaky coalition with the former opposition of Prime Minister Morgan
Tsvangirai has stepped up its programme to take over a 51% stockholding for black Zimbabweans in
foreign-controlled mines and businesses.
"These policies have caused the scarcity of money. If
we scrapped the takeovers, the Reserve Bank wouldn't have to do this," he
said. "Government expenditures should be paid from tax revenues and not
compulsory loans" from Zimbabweans.
Executives of the nation's 200 real estate firms say the new
controls will drive already depressed property sales into a greater slump that
will put existing sales on hold, push some of them out of business and thwart
the central bank's objective to stop capital flight.
They say sellers have described the new controls as unfair
and even "daylight robbery", interfering with their plans to reinvest
their own money in the local economy.
No figures are available on monthly property sales. Regular
suburban homes in Harare sell for up to $300 000, with mansions and businesses
exceeding $1m.
