Zimbabwe’s new currency woes hit traditional stores while illegal night bazaars flourish

HARARE, Zimbabwe — Batsirai Pabwe picked detergents, toothpaste, snacks and some pasta among several grocery items spread on the tarmac of a car parking space — an unorthodox night bazaar lit by cellphone flashlights and fluorescent lamps in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. “I decided to give it a try and I really enjoyed it.” For the same amount in a supermarket a week ago, Pabwe said he only managed to get “meat and spices and they were not even that much.” The once-prosperous southern African nation of 15 million people in April introduced a new gold-backed currency called ZiG, short for Zimbabwe Gold, to replace one that had been battered by depreciation and often outright rejection by the people. It is the country’s sixth attempt at a new currency since the spectacular 2009 collapse of the Zimbabwe dollar and adoption of the U.S. dollar as legal tender amid hyperinflation of 5 billion percent, one of the world’s worst currency crashes to date. It warned of store closures, saying the situation is “clearly untenable.” In October, Pick n Pay, one of Africa’s biggest grocery chains that operates more than 70 stores jointly with a local partner in Zimbabwe, said that it had ‘impaired” its investment in Zimbabwe “to a book value of zero” because of the “deteriorating economic conditions.” “In every transaction business is doing in the formal setup, it’s making an exchange rate loss that cannot be compensated.