New forms of "money"

Zimbabweans are turning to fuel coupons as a new form of "currency" after struggling to find local money, which continues to lose its value steeply.

Simon Gambaga, 43, who owns a backyard carpentry business, faces eviction from the middle-income suburban home where he and his family live, about 10km south of Harare, the capital, after refusing to pay his rent with petrol (gasoline) coupons.

"My landlord has told me to vacate the house because I indicated to him that there was no way I could raise the foreign currency to buy the fuel coupons. Houses to rent are difficult to get these days, and that means that my four children, wife and I might end up living in the open if we fail to secure alternative lodgings," Gambaga told IRIN.

The coupons are usually obtained from fuel stations in exchange for foreign currency. His landlord was asking for 200 litres of petrol in coupons, amounting to US$300, an astronomical figure for Gambaga, whose business has declined because he has hardly any buyers for his products. The landlord has no car and refused to accept payment in liquid petrol.

"As it is, I am struggling to keep the children in school, we barely have enough food and I need to settle a huge bill after my wife stayed for two weeks in hospital, where she was operated on for breast cancer. God knows where on earth I would raise that kind of money," he said.

[Fuel coupons are a] clever type of barter trade, now the norm countrywide in an economy where the local currency is not worth much

"We have seen many property owners arrested for charging rent in foreign currency, but there is no law that I am aware of that stipulates that a landlord cannot ask for fuel coupons, so that way we are able to dodge the law, while at the same time getting our rent in a form that enables us to keep our money stable," a landlord who refused to be identified told IRIN.

Like Gambaga's landlord, he cannot accept fuel "because that would leave me with the burden of having to go out onto the streets to sell it again". Landlords usually sell the coupons to illegal fuel dealers, who pay for them with foreign currency.

Zimbabwe's run-away inflation, estimated at 2.2 million percent by the government and at more than 15 million percent by independent economists, has severely weakened the currency.

The hyperinflation is characteristic of an economy suffering a biting shortage of foreign currency in the formal banking system, scarcity of commodities, power and fuel, as well as shrinking industrial production and unemployment levels thought to be around 80 percent.

"Fuel coupons are now firmly a form of currency in a country whose people will stop at nothing to ensure that they are protected against a hyperinflationary environment," John Robertson, an economic analyst, told IRIN.

"Like foreign currency, the value of the coupons does not change, even if kept for a long time and, that way, service providers realise that they are able keep their money in a stable form," he said.

"In other words, coupons are a replacement for foreign currency, and insistence on their usage by those who offer services or sell products amply indicates the level to which our economy has dollarised."

Robertson described payment in fuel coupons as a "clever type of barter trade, now the norm countrywide in an economy where the local currency is not worth much."

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