Recently, Zimbabwe, which has long been plagued by hyperinflation, has taken new measures to combat inflation: the Zimbabwean government has officially issued gold coins to combat severe domestic inflation and local currency depreciation, and use them as an important means of value savings.
If inflation, which is now spreading around the world, is the main problem facing the world economy, then for Zimbabwe, it is already the "basic disk" and "old acquaintance" of its domestic economy. As a typical case of hyperinflation, Zimbabwe has set a number of records in the past few decades, including the record of the highest rate of inflation, the record of the largest denomination of the issued currency, and so on. At a time when people "talk about the inability to afford a few eggs with a million billion denominations of banknotes", Zimbabwe is suffering from this inflationary pain and stagnating.
Since the beginning of this year, Zimbabwe has once again experienced high inflation. By the end of June, the national inflation annualized rate had reached 191.4%, meaning that the 1 yuan at the beginning of the year had now depreciated to 0.33 yuan, and the purchasing power had plummeted by two-thirds. In response to inflation, the Zimbabwean government raised interest rates by 12,000 basis points in one fell swoop (in contrast, the Fed raised interest rates by 75 basis points and the European Central Bank by 50 basis points has made the market fluctuate sharply), raising the policy rate to 200%. If you extend the time to 2020, zimbabwe's price index has already risen by 14.5 times, which is staggering.
In desperation, the Zimbabwean government began to "trace the source" and decided to issue gold coins to the public from July 2022. Mosi oa-Tunya (meaning thunderous smoke, which can also be translated as "thunderous rain mist") gold coins are 32 mm in diameter, 2.63 mm thick, weigh 22 carats, made of 22k gold, and are sold at the spot price of gold plus 5% of the production cost. The Zimbabwean government also stipulates that gold coins can be purchased in local or foreign currencies, but need to be held for at least 180 days after purchase, so as to reduce excess cash in the market and prevent the depreciation of the local currency.
As of now, Zimbabwe's central bank said it has sold as many as 1,500 gold coins to the market and expects to continue to invest thousands of gold coins in the future, increasing or decreasing as appropriate depending on inflation control.