THE Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) has issued 736,52 kilogrammes worth of gold-backed digital tokens since their introduction towards the end of last year.
The tokens, which are called Zimbabwe Gold or ZiG became an approved means of payment for domestic transactions with effect from October last year.
Introduced following the Monetary Policy Committee’s resolution to complement physical gold coins, the tokens were released in 2022.
In a public notice following the issuance of the additional gold-backed digital tokens on Tuesday, the RBZ said cumulatively 736,518,865.00 milligrammes equivalent to 736,52kg have been issued to date.
On Tuesday, the central bank said it had received 12 applications from the market to buy ZiG where a total of $5,2 billion was realised by the monetary authority.
The price per milligramme of gold was $1, 078.01 while 4,86kg were bought.
“Applications for the RBZ gold-backed digital tokens should be submitted through the banks and the GBDT will be issued daily on a tap basis,” it said.
Institutions and individuals have been able to buy the tokens using local or foreign currency from their banks.
The tokens have been available as an investment or store of value and were being issued to expand the value-preserving instruments available in the economy, enhance the divisibility of the investment instruments, and widen their access as well as usage by the transacting public.
The ZiG is at par with the value of the physical Mosi-a-Tunya gold coin and remains informed by the international gold price since it derives its value from gold reserves held by the RBZ.
ZiG accounts at financial institutions run alongside the nostro and local currency accounts.
The gold coins and ZiG were introduced by the authorities to complement measures introduced by the Government where the Treasury has been implementing the value for money audits to do away with overpricing on public contracts and fronting loading exchange rates.
The greedy practices resulted in companies pocketing huge sums of Zimbabwe dollar liquidity, which they offloaded on the parallel foreign exchange market, driving interest rates that fuelled inflation resurgence.
