• RBZ has suspended the 10% ZiG payment requirement for artisanal and small-scale miners, reverting to 100% USD retention due to implementation challenges
• The suspension was triggered by Fidelity Gold Refinery's operational difficulties and concerns about unbanked ASSM miners, highlighting Zimbabwe's financial inclusion gaps
• LSM continue to operate under the 70% USD, 30% ZiG retention split, creating an asymmetry between the two sectors

Harare- The Monetary Policy Committee of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, in its resolutions dated 24 March 2026, announced the temporary suspension of the 90% USD, 10% ZiG export retention arrangement for small-scale gold miners that had been introduced in the February 2026 Monetary Policy Statement.

The suspension was triggered by two specific implementation failures: Fidelity Gold Refinery encountered operational challenges in processing the ZiG component of payments, and the Zimbabwe Mining Federation notified the RBZ that a significant proportion of artisanal and small-scale miners are unbanked and therefore unable to receive ZiG payments through the formal banking system. The Committee resolved to suspend implementation while appropriate logistics are put in place, with no timeline given for re-implementation.

The effect of the suspension is that ASSM miners revert to receiving 100% of their gold sale proceeds in United States dollars, the arrangement that applied before the February MPS introduced the 10% ZiG component. Simultaneously, and without any modification, large-scale miners continue to operate under the 70% USD, 30% ZiG retention split that has been in place since earlier policy cycles.

The result is two sectors of the same industry, producing the same commodity in the same country, operating under fundamentally different currency payment arrangements as a consequence of a policy that was introduced and suspended within a matter of weeks.

The immediate financial implication of the reversion for ASSM miners is a return to the arrangement they have always known. Under 100% USD retention, every ounce of gold delivered to Fidelity is paid entirely in United States dollars at the official interbank gold price. There is no implicit cost from currency conversion, no parallel market exposure, and no ZiG liquidity risk. For an artisanal miner delivering gold in the Midlands or Mashonaland, the suspension means the February MPS change has no practical effect on their income.

They deliver gold, they receive dollars, and the ZiG question is, for now, someone else's problem. The relief is genuine but it is also temporary, because the MPC has been explicit that the suspension is operational rather than permanent, and the policy intent to bring ASSM miners into the ZiG payment framework remains intact. The question of when the infrastructure conditions are sufficiently in place to re-implement is unanswered, and the absence of a timeline is itself an analytical signal about how far those conditions currently are from being met.

Large-scale miners, including Caledonia Mining's Blanket operation, Freda Rebecca, and Padenga Holdings, continue to surrender 30% of their foreign currency earnings in ZiG at the official interbank rate. This requirement has been in place for an extended period and has not been suspended or modified in the 24 March MPC resolutions. The practical difference between the two sectors that explains the different treatment is not the policy intent but the operational context.

Large-scale miners are fully banked, have treasury functions capable of managing currency conversion, have legal and compliance departments that can process regulatory requirements, and operate through formal corporate structures with bank accounts denominated in both USD and ZiG. Artisanal miners, many of whom deliver gold informally or semi-formally to Fidelity, are frequently unbanked, operate through individual or small-group arrangements without formal corporate structures, and lack the financial infrastructure that makes currency policy requirements operationally deliverable.

The MPC's distinction between the two sectors is therefore not arbitrary: it reflects the genuine difference in the operational readiness of each group to absorb a currency policy change. What it also reflects, however, is the degree to which Zimbabwe's ZiG adoption strategy is constrained by the depth of financial inclusion in the sectors it most needs to reach.

For large-scale miners, the 30% ZiG surrender has been a persistent and quantifiable cost since its introduction. The mechanism works as follows: LSM miners receive 70% of gold sale proceeds in USD and 30% in ZiG at the official interbank rate. When those miners need to convert their ZiG receipts into USD for operational purposes, including paying for imported inputs, servicing foreign-currency debt, or repatriating dividends, they must access the interbank market or the parallel market.

At the interbank market, which is managed and rationed, access may be limited or delayed. At the parallel market, the cost is the 30% premium (currently) that the ZiG carries against the dollar. The implicit cost of the 30% ZiG surrender at a 30% parallel market premium is approximately 9 cents on every dollar surrendered.

On Caledonia Mining's FY2025 revenue of US$267.7 million, the 30% ZiG surrender represents approximately US$80.3 million in ZiG receipts. At a 30% parallel market premium, the implicit conversion cost is approximately US$24 million. That is a real cost borne by the mining company, its shareholders, and its community stakeholders that does not appear explicitly in the ZiG policy documentation but is embedded in the economics of every large-scale mine operating in Zimbabwe.

The gap between the ASSM and LSM retention arrangements reveals something important about the structural constraints on Zimbabwe's ZiG adoption strategy that goes beyond the immediate policy mechanics. Zimbabwe's gold sector is dominated by ASSM production,  approximately 75% of total output, or roughly 35 tonnes of the 46.7 tonnes produced in 2025, comes from the artisanal and small-scale sector.

The LSM sector accounts for the remaining 25%, or approximately 11 to 12 tonnes. This means that the sector bearing the ZiG retention obligation produces approximately one quarter of Zimbabwe's gold, while the sector that has been exempted from ZiG payment produces three quarters. The monetary policy lever of ZiG retention in the gold sector is therefore currently operating on its smaller, more formally structured component, while the larger, more economically significant component has been released from that obligation.

For a policy designed to create ZiG demand by channelling gold earnings into the local currency, this is a significant structural limitation. The demand creation effect of LSM ZiG retention on 25% of output is real but bounded. The demand creation that would come from ASSM ZiG retention on 75% of output, if and when it is operationalised, is multiple times larger in economic significance.

The banking penetration problem exposed by the ASSM suspension is not a problem that can be solved by a policy announcement. It requires sustained investment in financial inclusion infrastructure, mobile money platforms that can hold and transmit ZiG balances, agent banking networks in rural mining communities, simplified account-opening processes for individuals without formal identification documents, and education programmes that build awareness of and trust in ZiG as a transactable currency.

Some of this infrastructure already exists in Zimbabwe's mobile money ecosystem, and the RBZ's Big 5 ZiG Banknote Series upgrade suggests that the central bank is aware of the importance of physical currency accessibility. But mobile money infrastructure for ZiG payments at Fidelity specifically requires system integration between the mobile money platforms, the Fidelity payment processing system, and the artisanal miner's mobile account, a three-step integration that needs to be tested and operationalised before the policy is announced rather than after it fails implementation.

The MPC's timeline of appropriate logistics being put in place will be measured in months at minimum, more likely in quarters, and the absence of a specific target date suggests that the RBZ does not yet have a clear view of how long that process will take.

For the ASSM ZiG retention policy to succeed when it is eventually re-implemented, three conditions need to be in place before the announcement rather than after. The first is banking infrastructure: a meaningful proportion of ASSM miners must have functional bank accounts or mobile money accounts capable of receiving ZiG balances before the policy becomes operative. The Zimbabwe Mining Federation's concern about unbanked miners is not a fringe issue. Zimbabwe's artisanal mining sector is estimated to include hundreds of thousands of individual operators, many working in areas with limited formal banking infrastructure. A credible estimate of the proportion who are unbanked, and a credible timeline for reducing that proportion to a level that makes the policy implementable, needs to precede the next announcement of the retention requirement.

The second condition is a functional ZiG payment mechanism at Fidelity Gold Refinery specifically. The operational challenges Fidelity encountered in processing the ZiG component of payments are not explained in detail in the MPC resolution, but the fact that they were significant enough to trigger a policy suspension within weeks of introduction suggests they were not minor administrative issues. The re-implementation of the policy should be preceded by a publicly disclosed operational readiness assessment from Fidelity confirming that the payment processing infrastructure is functional before miners are subjected to a policy that their payment processor cannot execute.

The third condition is a credible ZiG liquidity assurance for miners who receive ZiG payments. The implicit cost of the parallel market premium, estimated at approximately 9 cents per dollar surrendered for LSM miners, is a real deterrent to ASSM miner participation in the formal gold delivery system. If artisanal miners believe that receiving ZiG at the official rate and then needing to convert it at a 30% parallel market discount is effectively a 3% tax on their total gold earnings, some proportion of them will divert deliveries to informal channels that offer full USD payment rather than accept the ZiG component through Fidelity.

Side-marketing in the gold sector, which TIMB's penalty schedule addresses in the tobacco sector through a different mechanism, is the equivalent risk for the gold sector ZiG policy. The RBZ needs to provide a credible assurance of ZiG liquidity and convertibility for ASSM miners that reduces the implicit cost of receiving ZiG to a level that does not create a side-marketing incentive. Without that assurance, the policy creates a perverse outcome, the ZiG retention requirement reduces formal gold delivery rates rather than increasing ZiG adoption.

The asymmetry between the two sectors, ASSM at 100% USD and LSM at 70% USD, is not a permanent or desirable equilibrium. It is a transitional consequence of the gap between Zimbabwe's ZiG adoption ambitions and the financial inclusion and operational infrastructure reality of its dominant gold producing sector. Closing that gap, through banking penetration investment, Fidelity system upgrades, and ZiG liquidity assurance, is the prerequisite work that the February MPS skipped and the March MPC suspension has forced into the open.

The gold sector's ZiG adoption story will be written in that foundational work, not in the policy announcements that follow.

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