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Business Reporter
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has started re-orienting its exchange control department to become a body that facilitates a favourable doing business environment which can attract foreign direct investment.The central bank is of the view that in order to gain confidence in the market, it was sticking to the multi-currency system in order to ensure investment security and liberalisation of exchange control was a right step towards attracting more foreign direct investment into the economy.

RBZ exchange control director Mr Morris Mpofu yesterday told the Exchange Control Stakeholder Awareness Workshop that the central bank is re-orienting the exchange control and has relaxed foreign exchange regulations as part of its liberalisation exercise.

“We are re-orienting our systems so that they facilitate business. Our aim is to improve the ease of doing business environment and people generally don’t look at control as an enabler to business. Awareness campaigns like these show there is progress in our liberalisation efforts.

“We saw the need to re-orient the exchange control so that over and above, its administration, accounting and monitoring framework. We are meeting stakeholders to create awareness,” said Mr Mpofu.

“So we are demystifying the exchange control and we want to tell the corporate world that the exchange control is there to support and facilitate business.”

Through the RBZ, Government said there was need to articulate a comprehensive, credible and transparent operational and administrative framework in the implementation of policy measures.

As part of the measures, regulations require specific applications to be made to exchange control authorities for the remittance of proceeds arising from disposal of immovable property.

Mr Mpofu said those companies that have discipline in the market will always be friends with the exchange but those who are violators of the country’s exchange control regulations will always be punished

He said in bid to improve the doing business environment RBZ has introduced the authorised dealer exchange authority.

Mr Mpofu said RBZ under the authority has liberalised outward money transfers where individuals can send money to their relatives outside the country through money transfer a situation which was not allowed in the past.

The authority also introduced the bureau de change which allows people to exchange currencies and RBZ has started the licensing of agents effective from April 1 this year.

Bureau de change is an office, often found in a bank, that allows consumers to exchange one currency for another. The bureau de change charges a commission for the currency exchange service.

“We have in the old framework already over 30 agencies that were licensed but under the new framework they are all have to be licenced again if they have met the new conditions,” said Mr Mpofu.