31 July 2009: Gono Indicates He Will Scupper Deal To Officially Adopt The Rand
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor, Gideon Gono, seen here with Mugabe at a warehouse where some of foodstuffs and goods from his quasi-fiscal operations were stashed, has come out publicly to defend his role as Monetary Policymaker, setting him on a collision course with Biti yet again. Gideon Gono's festive Monetary Policy tradition came to end yesterday. Instead of calling all and sundry (even our advertising agency got an invite) to his Mount to hear the Sermon, he called in only bank industry CEOs this time. He is much more restricted now, with the ending of quasi-fiscal activities and therefore can not pronounce policy position on all sorts of areas as he used to. One notable thing that came out of his Monetary Statement yesterday was an indication that he and Mugabe are balking at one of the demands from the South Africans for Zimbabwe to join the Rand Monetary Union. "Our strong views and preference, however, are that as Zimbabweans, we must have our own currency and au...