Denford Magora's Latest Zimbabwe News Blog

Bank charges remain high in Zimbabwe, with Stanbic Bank (above, during the cash crunch of the Zimbabwe dollar days) getting 73 percent of its income from fees and commission and ABC bank getting 92% of its income from the same source as well as dealing commissions. The jump in deposits at Zimbabwean banks could have been much higher than it is now if these charges were reduced. But the mentality still seems to be that of milking the banking public for all they are worth. Harare, Zimbabwe, 16 October 2009 From a base of US$200 million in February this year, deposits at Zimbabwe's banks have now reached more than US$700 million, an increase that shows people are slowly beginning to gain confidence in the banking system. Zimbabwean banks also revealed yesterday that they have dispersed  US$368 in loans to their clients, from a zero advances position in February this year, when the Inclusive Government was inaugurated. Zimbabwe now uses a mixture of South African Rand and US dollars as...

Morgan Tsvangirai chats to clients at Stanbic Bank during last year's cash shortages. Stanbic appears now to be one of the worst banks in Zimbabwe, destroying confidence in the banking system by taking more than three days to do an electronic transfer that should be instant, according to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. For three days now, Stanbic Bank in Zimbabwe (part of the Standard Bank of South Africa Group) has been failing to make an electronic transfer of funds from a funded account at their bank to the payee at Barclays Bank. An electronic transfer is supposed to be instant or at worst to be effected overnight. But three days later, Stanbic are still to make the payment. There is no explanation about why this is so. The acount from which they should transfer the money is funded, they accepted the order and stamped it. Which begs the question: What is Stanbic doing with people's money held by them? It also raises other questions. Such as: With a banking system so utterly u...