Business Times Africa Magazine 2017 /vol 9/ No2 BT2Edition2017_web | Page 50

KEEPING ZIMBABWE AFLOAT: TRADING ON THE STREETS AND OFF THE BOOKS
On Harare’s outskirts, industrial
areas have been gutted. Abandoned
factories are now used by the
homeless, drug dealers, prostitutes
and churches.
In Southerton — the district
where Mr. Chitiyo, the street vendor,
once worked as a machine operator
— Philda Chinyoka, the pastor at
the True Covenant International
Ministries, a Pentecostal church, said
she had moved her church to the area
in 2014.
“The building was just empty,” she
said. “I hear it used to be a tissue
paper-making company.”
Inside a nearby abandoned
building, with missing doors and
broken windows, prostitutes operate
day and night.
“The company that used to
manufacture net wire here — I forget
its name — closed shop in 2006,” said
Esther Munetsi, 27, who has worked
in the building as a prostitute for the
last nine years.
With
manufacturing’s
sharp
decline, as well as the resulting drop
in exports and spike in imports,
Zimbabwe suffers from a steep trade
imbalance. That imbalance’s effect
on the economy is exacerbated by the
American dollar, which Zimbabwe
adopted in 2009 to combat
hyperinflation.
48 Business Times Africa | 2017
Because of the ballooning trade
imbalance and widespread hoarding
of the greenback, Zimbabwe has
experienced a crippling shortage of
dollars since last March. Efforts to
encourage the use of plastic money —
and the introduction, so far, of nearly
$100 million into the market of a
surrogate currency called bond notes
— have helped, though not enough.
Customers still stand for hours in long
lines outside banks to try to withdraw
the few dollars available.
With the government now strictly
controlling the transfer of dollars
outside Zimbabwe, companies
dependent on trade are finding it
increasingly difficult to import critical
goods.
“We have companies scaling down
or discontinuing certain lines that
are heavy on import requirements,”
said Busisa Moyo, president of
the Confederation of Zimbabwe
Industries.
At a small auto parts shop in central
Harare, called Track Board, Prince
Mapira, 23, said American dollars
had vanished from the marketplace.
Customers now pay only in bond
notes, which are recognized only
inside Zimbabwe, creating a problem
for his business.
The auto shop needs American
dollars to import parts from South
Africa or Japan. So Mr. Mapira takes
the bond notes, which are supposed
to be the equivalent of the American
dollar, to exchange on the black
market.
“If you go there with 100 dollars in
bond notes, they give you $70 or $80,”
he said. “It’s not equal on the black
market.”
As the formal economy keeps
shrinking, more and more people
have been crowding the area where
Mr. Chitiyo sells shirts on Robert
Mugabe Road.
Across the street, a girl’s voice was
crying, “Twenty-five cents for a cob!”
It belonged to Tariro Dongo, 13, on
her first evening working as a street
vendor. It was past 9 p.m. Tariro said
she was good in school and wanted to
become a teacher.
She had bought 20 corn cobs for
$2 near her home in Epworth, a
poor township outside Harare. If
she sold everything, her profit, after
transportation, would amount to a
couple of dollars. Sitting on a black
bucket and fanning the coals in a
small charcoal burner with a piece of
cardboard, Tariro roasted the cobs.
She was happy with the money she
had made on her first day, Tariro said.
“Twenty-five cents,” she cried.
“One cob left!” – NewYorkTimes