The long awaited and ambitious project, Operation Sunrise 2, which was scheduled to change the country’s currency on December 1, has been rejected by cabinet.

Gono's Operation Sunrise II fails to take off

Gono has been facing stiff resistance to his currency change operation with many ministers – irked by his strong influence on Mugabe – opposing the operation saying it merely cured the symptoms instead of the cause of economic malaise the country faces.

“It was rejected by almost all ministers in cabinet. They said changing the currency would do nothing to achieve economic turnaround. He (Gono) will meet Mugabe tomorrow morning to argue his case before Mugabe goes to parliament,” said one source.

Authorities at the Central Vehicle Registry (CVR) denied the RBZ permission to use the vehicles without them being issued number plates and cited a number of issues, top among them being insurance for the cars. 

RBZ completed the recruitment of former police officers in the last week of November. It also purchased 1000 money counters and has been on stand-by since then.

Gono did not respond to questions sent to him on the matter when he returned from Lisbon.

Operation Sunrise 2 had sought to change Zimbabwe’s currency whose face value has been wiped away by record hyper-inflation which currently stands at 14 840%.

The zeros, which had been slashed from the currency in August 2006, have since returned and Gono said he would try to remove at least five or six zeros this time around to restore sanity to the economy.

To show how desperate the situation has become, two weeks ago, the 2008 National Budget Statement amounted to quadrillions of dollars. Before Operation Sunrise 1, banks complained of their systems being unable to handle trillions resulting in the slash.

Gono returned home on Saturday from Portugal where he received a prize for his efforts to turnaround the economy and for restoring sanity to the financial sector.

However one Harare based economist John Robertson said it was a shame he had accepted the prize.

“His quasi-fiscal activities are the major driver of inflation and furthermore, what sanity can you talk of in the financial services sector when there is massive de-banking?” Robertson asked.

“No one wants to bank their money because of the ridiculously low interest rates, government is stealing money legally because of these low interest rates through the issuance of its bonds, the chaos affecting banks where everyone is queuing for cash is evident and there is no money on the money market."

"There is no significant devaluation, so what turnaround efforts is he making? It is nothing but a shame,” Robertson added.

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