Zimbabwe. After the devaluation, stores introduce the “one item per person” rule

In most stores, from Monday you can only buy one carton of milk, one loaf of bread, one bottle of olive oil, one package of rice or one can of coffee.

Last week, sellers warned that they would go bankrupt if they were forced to continue selling at the artificially high official ZiG rate. On Wednesday, the managers of the country's largest supermarket chains, Pick n Pay and OK Supermarket, warned that they would most likely be forced to close stores due to devaluation.

According to Zimpricecheck, a retail industry watchdog, “this sudden change belies recent government assurances about the stability of ZiG and its supposed gold backing.”

The government and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe blame illegal currency traders for ZiG's dismal exchange rate. However, the fight against them is doomed to failure. Police officers sent to the streets to catch currency traders sabotage the orders given to them. Their salaries also depreciate every day, so they try to convert them into stable US dollars as quickly as possible.

Pensioners are also furious. When the new currency was introduced, their benefits were set at ZiG 13.9 per USD, now that the government has valued ZiG at USD 24.88, their pensions they are almost half the size and arrive with an additional three-month delay.

Economist Lyle Begbie of Oxford Economics warned that it would be carried out by the government currency devaluation probably won't be enough because “inflationary pressures and limited access to international capital markets continue to weigh on the economy”.

Zimbabweans are afraid of a repeat of 2008, when the value of one USD reached 100 billion Zimbabwe dollars and they carried their payments home in wheelbarrows and carts. Now they want their salaries and pensions to be paid in US dollars.