WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2004-01-07 Posted By: Jan
From the News Archives of: WWW.AfricanCrisis.Org
Date & Time Posted: 1/7/2004 5:46:01 AM
Zimbabwe banking crisis as cash runs out
[Note. Zimbabwe’s financial meltdown in progress. Jan]
With more than a third of the country’s 17 commercial banks unable to honour their customers’ cheques, Zimbabwe’s financial system is in crisis. For the last week six banks – including one owned by the government – have been excluded from the daily clearing because they do not have the necessary cash to pay other banks. Trust Bank, the largest, said yesterday that an audit by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, the central bank, had shown it to be “one of the most solvent institutions” in the country. It tried to calm depositor nerves amid reports that leading retailers had refused to accept its cheques. Trust said “the only challenge” was its liquidity situation – which was being addressed. Zimbabwe’s banking crisis was foreshadowed by the International Monetary Fund last year, when it warned that four years of “persistent economic decline” posed a serious threat to the health of the banking system.
With inflation trebling from 199 per cent at the end of 2002 to 619.5 per cent last November, the authorities finally moved to tighten monetary policy late last year. Money market interest rates surged from well under 100 per cent to as high as 900 per cent, forcing some banks to increase their prime lending rates to between 300 and 600 per cent. At the same time the stock market collapsed. Industrial share prices have halved over the last four months. Many companies, financial institutions and individuals that borrowed heavily during three years of substantially negative real interest rates, well below the inflation rate, have now been squeezed by the steep rise in borrowing rates, forcing them to liquidate assets.
Financial institutions and companies have been dumping foreign exchange on the parallel market. Consequently the exchange rate has strengthened from Z$7,000 to the US dollar three weeks ago to Z$4,750. There are reports too of forced selling of vehicles and real estate as companies and banks scramble to convert assets into cash. Last week an asset management group, ENG Capital, collapsed and the central bank closed one of its subsidiaries, Century Discount House. The ENG group, whose directors have been arrested on allegations of fraud, was managing funds worth Z$190bn ((194)Â(163)£132m). Last month Gideon Gono, governor of the Reserve Bank, announced an end to easy access for banks to central bank credit at low interest. But as the crisis deepens, bankers and economists say Mr Gono will soon be forced to choose between pumping cash into the system to relieve troubled banks or risk pushing them to the wall.
Source:Financial Times (UK)
By Tony Hawkins in Harare
URL: http://www.zwnews.com/issuefull.cfm?ArticleID…br>