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Stubbornly pegged at an official exchange rate of $1 to Z$250 for ordinary Zimbabweans, the black market exchange market offers $1 for Z$25,000. Z$250 will buy a small boiled sweet and Z$25,000 is a quarter of what will cover a frugal breakfast excursion to a café. The government scheme is to “creatively” encourage exports by purchasing foreign currency at the special “parallel market” exchange rate of Z$15,000. Thus the bank is losing Z$14,750 for every single American dollar that it buys.

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