From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   The Country Behind the $100,000,000,000,000 Bill Hits a New Stage of   
   Dysfunction   
   By Gabriele Steinhauser and Bernard Mpofu, March 23, 2023, WSJ7   
   HARARE, Zimbabwe—On a recent afternoon, Rutendo Manyowa handed over a U.S.   
   $5 bill to pay for her $3.50 order of chicken, fries and a soft drink at a   
   popular fast-food joint in the Zimbabwean capital. But instead of a $1 bill   
   and two quarters in change,   
    the cashier handed Ms. Manyowa three slips of paper, bearing the   
   restaurant’s name and the amount of money she could use to buy her next meal.   
      
   Zimbabwe, the country that brought the world the one-hundred-trillion-dollar   
   bill, has reached a new stage of monetary dysfunction. Because of a lack of   
   small change, businesses have started printing their own “money”—scraps   
   of paper, sometimes    
   handwritten, that customers can use to pay for future purchases. Others are   
   handing out change in-kind, making customers whole with juice boxes, pens or   
   slices of cheese.   
      
   The paper chits and other pecuniary workarounds are the latest products of two   
   decades of extreme mismanagement of Zimbabwe’s currency.    
      
   It started in the early 2000s, when the government of then-President Robert   
   Mugabe printed ever more money in an attempt to compensate for a collapse in   
   agricultural production that followed a controversial land-redistribution   
   effort. After monthly    
   inflation peaked, by one measure, at 79.6 billion percent, the government in   
   2009 abolished the Zimbabwe dollar and began using U.S. dollars instead.    
      
   That switch brought a few years of monetary stability, until the Reserve Bank   
   of Zimbabwe could no longer meet the demand for U.S. dollars. Money stored in   
   bank accounts couldn’t be withdrawn in cash and, in early 2019, the central   
   bank reintroduced    
   the Zimbabwe dollar, changing U.S. dollar-denominated savings and domestic   
   government debts into a local currency of rapidly declining value.    
      
   Today, $1 costs more than 900 Zimbabwean dollars and inflation hit 230% in   
   January. Most businesses once again demand payments in U.S. dollars, although   
   the Zimbabwe dollar remains the country’s official currency.   
      
   That’s where the issue of change comes in. Zimbabwean commercial banks and   
   the central bank import U.S. dollar bills for local use, but their heavy   
   weight and low value makes flying in coins from overseas uneconomical.   
   One-dollar notes—the most    
   widely used bills in a country where even before the pandemic nearly 40% of   
   people lived on less than $1.80 a day—are also often in short supply.   
      
   The paper IOUs have proven an unsatisfactory fix. For starters, they aren’t   
   fungible. Ms. Manyowa, a 23-year-old college student, spent 15 minutes waiting   
   by the till of a Harare Chicken Inn until another customer paid with a $1 bill   
   she could use for    
   the bus fare home.   
      
   “It’s frustrating,” Ms. Manyowa said as she waited.   
      
   In contrast to bank notes, which are usually made from cotton or plastic,   
   paper chits also can’t withstand an extended spin in the washing machine.   
      
   Adelaide Moyo, a journalist for a Zimbabwean newspaper, says she has more than   
   once found the faded remnants of vouchers from Chicken Inn or the local   
   franchise of Netherlands-based supermarket chain Spar stuck to her clothes   
   when she pulls them out of    
   the wash.   
      
   To avoid such losses, Ms. Moyo says she has accepted slices of cheese, extra   
   sauce and, once, a hard-boiled egg instead of more paper chits. Those barter   
   trades usually don’t offer good value for money, like the slice of cheese   
   that cost her $0.50, but,   
    she says, they’re better than carrying around, or losing, vouchers from   
   multiple places. “You’d rather just get the food,” she said.   
      
   Zimbabwe’s malfunctioning currency has forced businesses to become creative,   
   says Warren Meares, the chief executive of Simbisa Brands, which owns Chicken   
   Inn and several other fast-food chains.   
      
   The rapid devaluation of the Zimbabwean dollar has made it too costly to   
   constantly reprint menus, which show prices in both U.S. dollars and the local   
   currency, so the company installed TV screens to display meals and their   
   prices. “It was costing us    
   almost $2,000 to $3,000 every time you had to change prices,” said Mr.   
   Meares.   
      
   Simbisa’s vouchers have serial numbers and are replaced every six months to   
   avoid their getting too worn out. Although they lack the safety features of   
   bank notes, Mr. Meares says he’s not aware of any attempts to forge the   
   chits, which only come in $   
   0.25 and $0.50. “We’re not going to accept more than $3 or $4 worth of   
   vouchers from you,” he said. “It’s not worth it.”   
      
   The company has also launched an app, called InnBucks, that allows customers   
   to receive change via a smartphone.   
      
   The chits issued by Spar feature an intricate pattern and holograms. The   
   supermarket chain has had to replace the electronic tags on its shelves   
   because the old ones ran out of digits to display prices in Zimbabwean dollars.   
      
   Smaller stores keep a book with the names of customers they still owe money to   
   behind the counter or scrawl amounts yet to be reimbursed on receipts. Some   
   clients, fearing that a shopkeeper won’t remember, have taken to filming   
   those exchanges on their    
   phones.   
      
   Harare-based economist Gift Mugano says that despite the chits’ drawbacks,   
   most Zimbabweans still prefer them to getting their change in local currency.   
   “People don’t trust the government. But the very same people trust the   
   private sector,” he    
   said. “If I’m given a token in a fast-food restaurant, I know tomorrow   
   when I come back it is accepted.”   
      
   Zimbabwe’s central bank and the finance ministry didn’t respond to   
   requests for comment.   
      
   When Zimbabwe was formally on the dollar in the 2010s, many businesses used   
   South African rand, which at the time traded at around 10 rand to the dollar,   
   as change. Since then, the neighboring country’s currency has also   
   fluctuated in value—it    
   currently trades at around 18 rand to the dollar—no longer making it a great   
   alternative.   
      
   Bank cards also aren’t widely used, as many Zimbabweans now withdraw their   
   salaries in U.S.-dollar cash the moment it hits their account. “Zimbabweans   
   have got this fun name. They’re calling it NMB bank,” said Mr. Mugano.   
   “National Mattress    
   Bank.”   
      
      
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