Story by Tichaona Kurewa
ZIMBABWE has called on the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Central Bank Governors to expedite the elimination of barriers hindering regional trade and transactions such as high costs and excessive delays.
SADC Central Bank Governors’ role remains key in creating and sustaining conducive macroeconomic and financial sector environments necessary for progressive investment and development in the region.
This includes supporting the financing of investments and taking leadership in the space of financial technology as well as other innovations around digital payment systems.
Cognisant of this role, Zimbabwe has implored the SADC Committee of Central Bank Governors (CCBG) to further seek ways to enhance regional financial inclusion, regional trade and remittance flows during a welcome dinner this Thursday in Victoria Falls.
“Let me take this opportunity to commend you for your sterling work aimed at promoting the SADC regional integration agenda, through the efforts of the Committee of Central Bank Governors and its sub-committees.
“Your committee has been pivotal in facilitating the deepening of regional integration, collaboration and cooperation within SADC and the region.
“Diaspora remittances play a critical role in boosting foreign currency inflows to finance economic development. As such, measures to address impediments to attracting diaspora financial flows are imperative and Governors are encouraged to ensure that the transmission channels are seamless,” said Vice President, Dr General (Retired) Constantino Chiwenga.
CCBG chairperson, Mr Lesetja Kganyago acknowledged the call by Zimbabwe indicating that the committee had its hands on the deck to address various impediments related to finance in the region.
“What our program would do is to underpin, firstly trade across the continent, because we are getting the payment systems on the continent to be interconnected, to be inter-operable so that trade reaches its final settlement.
“Secondly, cross-border payment and making cross-border payment cost-effective, efficient and accessible for the citizens of the block, is something we are going to carry into our G-20Â programme and it is to make payments fast across the borders.
“In that respect, SADCÂ is very advanced, we have been able to do this thing on a wholesale basis through our SADC Real Time Gross Settlement system and we have now come to a point where we can take this to another level and take it to the retail side through our transactions on an immediate basis and it will take financial inclusion to another level on a cross border basis,” he said.
The positive developments in ZiG currency and the adoption of a floating exchange rate management framework by Zimbabwe augurs well with the SADC objective of fostering monetary integration in the region, which should see SADC becoming a Monetary Union in the next few years.
