HARERE: Seventeen pharmacies across Zimbabwe have been found to be using black market exchange rates, and face possible revocation of trading licences, the Finance and Economic Development Ministry said.
It said its Financial Intelligence Unit had found the pharmacies in several towns and cities using parallel exchange rates ranging from Z$8,500 to the greenback, to Z$11,000 to the US dollar.
On Tuesday, the official exchange rate stood at ZWL$4 998 to US$1. The pharmacies caught offside were in Kadoma, Chegutu, Kwekwe, Gweru, Rusape and Mutare, New Ziana reported.
“Government notes with concern that some market players continue to exhibit highly destabilising forward pricing and speculation in outright violation of exchange control directives as well as standing government policy guidelines with respect to pricing and the use of domestic currency. This practice is particularly rampant but is certainly not limited to the pharmaceutical sector,” it reported the Ministry said.
“Government has instituted measures that will result in the suspension and or cancellation of the trading licences of the following pharmacies,” it added.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa at the weekend accused some captains of industry of sabotaging the government’s economic development programmes and policies by manipulating the local currency, among other trading malpractices, and threatened stern action against them, New Ziana reported.
He said the moves, which included hoarding basic commodities, were meant to profiteer and to stir up public anger against the government in the run-up to next month’s elections in a bid to influence voting. – BERNAMA-NEW ZIANA
