Is Zimbabwe ditching the dollar?

Zimbabwe has been using the US dollar for most transactions since their own currency's value plummeted in 2009. Will the nation move on to the Chinese yuan instead?

Zimbabwe’s money printer extraordinaire, Gideon Gono, says he’s worried about the U.S. dollar and believes “As a country, we still have the opportunity to avoid being caught napping by adopting the Chinese yuan as part of consolidating the country’s look East policy.”

After the Zim dollar crashed in early 2009 with price inflation rates reaching 98%–a day! Since then, most transactions in Zimbabwe have been done in U.S. dollars.

But back when he was creating Zimbabwe dollars by the bail, Gono said, “Therefore, printing money to sustain lives, to build infrastructure and a springboard from which to leap forward, cannot be bad.” At the time he looked to America for inspiration. “Look at the bridges across the many rivers in New York and elsewhere,” Gono told New African, “and the other infrastructure in the country that were built with high budget deficits. There are times when it is necessary to dig deeper and construct or reconstruct.”

“To ensure that my people survive, I had to print money,” Gono told Newsweek. “I found myself doing extraordinary things that aren’t in the textbooks. Then the IMF asked the U.S. to please print money. The whole world is now practicing what they have been saying I should not. I decided that God had been on my side and had come to vindicate me.”

After a couple years of using foreign currencies Gono wants another chance writes New Zimbabwe.

Gono says Zimbabwe should in fact be looking to the Chinese yuan as its main currency, while urgently seeking to restore its own currency which was abandoned in 2009 after a dramatic loss of its value.

According to Gono,

A good currency is so hard to find.