Business News
Zimbabwe would need huge sum to compensate local currency holders
Oct 8, 2011, 6:40 GMT
Harare- The Zimbabwean government would need 54 billion dollars to compensate people who lost their savings when the country abolished its own currency two years ago, a state-owned newspaper reported Saturday.
The Herald quoted Finance Minister Tendai Biti saying the huge figure would 'choke' the poverty stricken country which needs about 10 billion dollars if it is to recover from a decade of economic decline.
Two years ago, the southern African nation abolished the virtually worthless Zimbabwe dollar.
Last year, Biti allocated about 7 million dollars to pay off some Zimbabwe dollar accounts at the United Nations, although no payments have been made so far.
Biti said the government would impose a cut-off point for compensation.
'We protect the poor people and so forth. We might come up with that (cut-off) because a lot of our people who have quintillions (of Zimbabwe dollars) and so forth do not have audit files,' Biti told the newspaper.
'If you review their tax files, they have not paid their tax. It will be meaningful if one gets something like 200 dollars,' he said.
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