The Confederation of Zimbabwe Retailers (CZR) says shop owners cannot be expected to sell their products in Zimbabwe dollars when they source the same products from manufacturers in foreign currency.
This follows reports that some wholesalers and retailers in Bulawayo and Harare are charging some basic grocery items strictly in foreign currency and refusing to take local currency.
The development is forcing consumers to go to the black market to secure foreign currency.
Speaking to The Sunday News, CZR president Denford Mutashu said the pricing of goods is determined by the currency that wholesalers and retailers use to source products from manufacturers. Said Mutashu:
We are in a multi-currency system and both the ZWL$ and the USD are official legal tender.
Retailers and wholesalers price goods and services according to the currency they use to source products from manufacturers.
Very few manufacturers and suppliers can release goods in local currency as a way of using their product to source forex and augment that which they get from the auction, which constitutes an average of 20 per cent to 40 per cent of their total requirement.
Instead of buying forex from the parallel market, businesses are using their products to source forex as a survival means.
Shops are not critical sectors. Close one today, two more will be opened tomorrow. Those operating outside the law in that sector should just be closed and owners locked up for the requisite period. When they come back from jail, a better shop will be set up where they used to operate. A non critical sector like retail shops should not be allowed to engage in lawlessness if the economy is to move forward. The fault lies with RBZ who give preferential forex allocation to cronies who then charge in US$ when they buy the currency in ZW$. These are unnecessary administrative burdens which the system creates in order to ventilate corruption and unethical business behaviour. Where is ZNCC when all this is happening, playing politics? Where is CZI?
Everybody is now sharing the same bed, but unfortunately none of them actually know the true value of the US dollar; they will increase prices once a week claiming that the value of the US dollar is falling when in fact it is the Zim dollar or Rand that is falling.