Finally its here…. The Mosi-aa-Tunya (named after the local name for the Victoria Falls) gold coin is available in Zimbabwe (if you can afford it) The Reserve Bank Governor officially launched the gold coin at a press conference this morning.
More than 2 000 of these bad boys have been minted but only 2000 have been availed to the market as of today 25 July 2022 to see how they fare. Subsequent replenishment will be on a demand basis.
As per the previous prediction the gold coin debuted at a price of US$1 823.80 or ZWL$805 745.35 per coin. It can also be bought via mixed basket of currencies at either the Reserve Bank or one’s bank and KYC protocol will apply.
The daily price of the gold coins will be announced by the RBZ every morning at 0800 based on the previous day’s London Bullion Market Association gold price, plus five percent to cover production and distribution costs.
What you should know about the Mosi-oa-Tunya
On the surface the idea behind the gold coins ticks the correct boxes:
According to the governor of the Reserve Bank “In Zimbabwe, there are two demands for foreign currency. The first demand for foreign currency is called import demand, the second is store of value demand, people do that because of what we went through in the past because of hyperinflation, the loss of money through currency reforms. People now therefore go to the parallel market to look for US dollars as a store of value.”
Its expected that the introduction of these gold coins is going to stabilise the exchange rate as those who have excess funds can use the gold coins as a store of funds instead using it to fuel the black market. It is further expected that such a measure would lessen the demand for forex and those who require forex for imports can better access it without competing with those who get forex to simply bank beneath National Mattress Savings Bank.
Measures have also been added to try and curb arbitration and speculative gold coin shenanigans as there is a minimum 180-day investment period and banks cannot offer loans to buy gold coins.
As an armchair analyst and bo expertise I have two concerns with this gold business:
- The Gold Quantity and Size
1 troy ounce of 22 carat gold with a purity of 91.67% makes for a pricey gold coin. While they say that anyone can buy these gold coins, regular everyday people would not have $1823 laying around to buy gold. The target market for the gold is wealthy elites and so one can forgive my not being too enthusiastic about something I can never dream to own, unless maybe I win the lottery or a miracle breakthrough happens.
The Reserve bank did announce they will look into making smaller denominations but I am not holding my breath.
- The Exchange Rate
-At the time of introducing the Gold Coin which is payable in local currency and foreign currency they used an exchange rate of 1:442 to the United States Dollar. Results from the last Forex auction
The black market rate which we are not supposed to talk about in some sectors is rumoured to have breached the 1:1000 mark…
This means that an enterprising entrepreneur who had USD $1800 to spend could go find a dealer from the streets who can change their USD into local currency and *boom*, now they can buy two gold coins for the price of one.
Who wants a bit of gold? 😂
Becoming The Muse 
Hmmmm, any chance of buying some of that there gold for a poor american relative? 😉
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Sure thing!!! Let’s see, I have started a mattress investment fund which if I manage to save $1000 dollars everyday by the end of the year I will be rolling in gold coins. 💰 🤣🤣
Now all we gotta figure out is how 🤪
~B
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$1.8k… yea.. wow.
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What ever happened to these things? Are they still being sold? I haven’t heard anything about them in a whiiiile…🤔
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Apparently they sold out…
So now we await the new batch which will hopefully have smaller denominations for the general populace in November kay thanks bye
~B
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