OK Zimbabwe seems to have stopped accepting USD… for now

Major retailer, OK Zimbabwe, has said it will stop accepting payments in United States Dollars, following a Statutory Instrument 127 of 2021, which made it illegal to price goods above the official exchange rate.

In a memo, the company said:

Our receipts at the tills are not yet in compliance with the SI which states that inter alia, a seller of goods or services is not allowed to issue a buyer thereof a receipt in Zimbabwe dollars for payment received in foreign currency, to record sales other than in the currency in which the sale was conducted.

This applies to OK Mart and Bon Marche.

This gives the indication that they were hit unawares and the government may have needed to consult a bit before going that route. That they give the receipt issue (the operative phrase being ‘not yet in compliance’) as a reason, could mean the situation is temporary, so we will see how this pans out.

OK Zimbabwe does say it will encourage people paying for goods to make use of its bureau de change, which it claims offers a much better rate than at the tills. What that means is not clear, given they have thrown the use of USD out the window.

The unintended consequence of this is that the black market gets back into business. This is based on the fact that businesses do not seem keen to drop their Zimbabwe dollar pricing. Actually, well, prices generally do not drop in Zimbabwe. So one could just go onto the street and buy cash and use it in the shop. Whether that makes sense long term is for time to tell, because the prince in Zimbabwe dollars could simply start going up.

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Other retailers and service providers have gone a different route. They have simply raised their USD price, to match the official exchange rate which sits at about 84 and some change.

We did visit to two OK establishments where USD was not being accepted. Noone wanted to comment on the memo.