• The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has suspended the 90% USD, 10% ZiG retention split for small-scale gold miners due to implementation challenges and concerns about unbanked miners
• The suspension highlights the sequencing problem in Zimbabwe's de-dollarisation strategy, with policies being implemented before operational foundations are in place
• The MPC maintained a 35% policy rate, citing inflation concerns, while acknowledging a slight increase in monthly inflation due to fuel price shocks

Harare- The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe's Monetary Policy Committee, meeting on 24 March 2026, has temporarily suspended the 90% United States dollar, 10% Zimbabwe Gold retention split introduced for small-scale gold miners in the February 2026 Monetary Policy Statement, reverting the sector to its previous 100% USD arrangement while the logistics of implementation are resolved.

The suspension, announced in the resolutions was triggered by implementation challenges at Fidelity Gold Refinery and concerns raised by the Zimbabwe Mining Federation that a significant proportion of artisanal and small-scale miners are unbanked and unable to receive ZiG payments through the formal system. The Committee resolved to temporarily suspend the policy while appropriate logistics are being put in place.

It is a short announcement that carries a long analytical tail, because the ASSM ZiG retention policy was not merely an operational tweak. It was one of the most significant de-dollarisation steps in the February MPS, representing the first time the artisanal mining sector had been formally brought into the ZiG payment framework. Its suspension within weeks of announcement is a candid admission that the policy was designed before the infrastructure required to deliver it existed.

This is the central analytical problem with Zimbabwe's ZiG adoption strategy, and the ASSM suspension illustrates it precisely. The RBZ has, across successive policy statements, constructed a de-dollarisation architecture that rests on mandates, directives, and requirements: government suppliers must accept ZiG, ASSM miners must receive 10% in ZiG, customs duties are payable in ZiG, ministries must procure in ZiG.

Each of these policy instruments is logically coherent in isolation.

The problem is that they are being built on a foundation of fundamentals that are not yet in place. A policy requiring unbanked artisanal miners to receive ZiG payments presupposes that those miners have bank accounts into which ZiG can be deposited.

A policy requiring government suppliers to accept ZiG presupposes that the interbank market is liquid enough to allow those suppliers to convert ZiG to USD at a rate that does not destroy their operating margins. A policy directing ZiG adoption across the economy presupposes that ZiG is accepted, at stable value, for the goods and services that matter most to the people being asked to hold it. None of these foundational conditions is fully in place, and the ASSM suspension is the most visible evidence yet that the sequencing problem in Zimbabwe's de-dollarisation strategy is real, consequential, and overdue for honest acknowledgement.

The suspension matters for ZiG's credibility beyond the immediate operational inconvenience. Every time a ZiG-related policy is announced and then suspended or walked back, the message received by the market is that the policy framework around ZiG is subject to reversal on short notice. That message is corrosive to confidence in a currency whose entire value proposition depends on the predictability and consistency of the institutional framework supporting it.

ZiG has achieved genuine monetary progress: annual inflation fell to 4.1% in January 2026, the first single-digit reading in over three decades, and declined further to 3.85% in February. That is a real achievement that reflects disciplined monetary management and should not be understated. But low inflation in a currency that is used for less than 20% of formal economy transactions and that still carries a 30% parallel market premium is a different kind of stability from the stability that allows a currency to expand its transaction share and displace the dollar in everyday commercial life.

The first kind of stability is achieved through supply restriction and interest rates. The second kind is built through consistent, credible policy execution over time. The ASSM suspension is a setback for the second kind, because it signals that Zimbabwe is still announcing ZiG policies before the operational foundations that make those policies workable are in place.

The MPC held the Bank Policy rate at 35%, maintaining what it described as a stay-the-course monetary policy stance, and kept statutory reserve requirements unchanged at 15% for savings and time deposits and 30% for demand and call deposits. The rate hold was framed around two concerns: limiting second-round inflationary effects from the recent fuel price shock, and keeping inflation expectations anchored within the single-digit range. The Committee acknowledged that monthly inflation will increase slightly in March, April, and May 2026 as the fuel price pass-through works through the economy, before returning to steady-state levels from June 2026.

This is the rational near-term assessment. A 35% policy rate is the highest in sub-Saharan Africa and is the primary instrument through which ZiG supply has been restricted to maintain its value. The cost of that restriction, however, is a credit environment in which no productive business in Zimbabwe can access ZiG financing at rates that allow meaningful investment or working capital management.

The same instrument that is holding inflation at 3.85% is suppressing the ZiG liquidity that would allow the currency to circulate widely enough to build the transaction base that genuine de-dollarisation requires. The MPC is managing this tension correctly in the narrow monetary sense. It is not yet resolving the structural contradiction between ZiG stability and ZiG adoption, because that contradiction cannot be resolved by interest rate policy alone.

The foreign currency position provides the strongest positive signal in the statement. Total foreign currency inflows reached US$3.35 billion in the first two months of 2026, compared to US$1.89 billion in the equivalent period of 2025, an increase of approximately 77% driven primarily by gold and platinum group metals export performance. That is an extraordinary improvement in Zimbabwe's external position, and it explains why the ZiG has maintained relative stability despite the parallel market premium and the policy implementation challenges.

The RBZ's explicit statement that strong inflows and reserve buffers will ensure adequate foreign currency to support critical imports, including fuel, is a direct response to market concern about fuel supply security in the context of Middle East disruptions. At US$3.35 billion in two months, Zimbabwe's foreign currency earnings trajectory in 2026 is running at a rate that, if sustained, would exceed US$20 billion for the full year, against US$16 billion in 2025.

That external position is the most credible foundation Zimbabwe's monetary stability currently has, and it is real. The question it raises is why, with that level of foreign currency strength, the ZiG still carries a 30% parallel market premium. The answer is that foreign currency strength and ZiG confidence are related but not the same variable. Confidence in ZiG requires not just that Zimbabwe earns dollars but that people believe holding ZiG is safe, predictable, and useful for the transactions that matter to them. The fundamentals of external earnings are increasingly strong. The fundamentals of currency confidence are still being constructed, one suspended policy at a time.

The upgraded Big 5 ZiG Banknote Series, launching on 7 April 2026 following nationwide public education campaigns, is a visible confidence-building measure that the MPC is deploying at a moment when the operational credibility of ZiG policy has taken a visible knock from the ASSM suspension. New banknotes with improved transactional convenience are a legitimate tool for building public familiarity and trust in a currency. They are not a substitute for the foundational work: ensuring that ZiG is accepted for fuel and passport fees, that the interbank market is liquid enough to support business currency conversion at rates close to the market rate, that bank account penetration among artisanal miners is sufficient to support ZiG payment programmes before those programmes are announced, and that government supplier arrears are cleared rather than withheld as a monetary management tool.

The RBZ and the MPC are managing Zimbabwe's monetary conditions with more sophistication than at any prior point in the post-dollarisation era. The ASSM suspension is a reminder that managing monetary conditions is necessary but not sufficient. Building a currency that people choose to hold requires implementing policies on the fundamentals first, and building the mandate architecture on top of them, not the other way around.

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