Not that we’re being ungrateful , but…….

After announcing a Financial Task Force this week, it seems Minister of Finance Mthuli Ncube had one more trick up his sleeve before the week ended as yesterday he announced that he was working on a new Financial Instrument that would mean users of mobile money platforms like Ecocash would gain interest for keeping money in their mobile wallets. It’s a welcome move as with our current economic situation, most Zimbabweans are used to hearing that they’re losing money not gaining it in any way, but unfortunately, it’s likely not anything for most Zimbabweans to get excited about either , as again, the current monetary situation gets in the way.

Allow us to take a look at the proposed interest rates:

• Users will get a rate of about 0.02%/day

• Keeping money in the wallet for more than 6 months you’ll get 90% of your money back.

When presented that way, it all sounds pretty incredible, and in all honesty, it would be, if the country wasn’t facing crazy inflation all over again. In comparison to the US dollar ( the admittedly preferred currency) , the ZWL keeps decreasing in value week over week, pushing people to spend any large amount of money they get over the thing they need before that good increases in price again. This of course kills the whole point of saving your ZWL let alone in mobile money platforms that have a lower informal market value anyway. And even if this wasn’t the case, Ecocash charges are actually beginning to increase again, meaning the money you might get from saving up in your wallet will likely get absorbed, or even surpassed by transaction charges, an optimistic man might say that’s better than nothing , but we reckon three dollars won’t do much when transacting ZWL $100 to someone.

So unfortunately , this expected move by the Ministry of Finance is better than many recent ones, but it doesn’t change much, an analogue to their money better-intentioned implementations in recent memory. But again, it’s not more money out of our pockets, and to be honest none of us were actually going to make much money from this either, so it’s essentially a “win” because we knew things could be much worse. Here’s to hoping these more progressive moves continue, and we can get one we can truly benefit from.