How the new ZiG currency will affect your Payroll

Last Friday, Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe announced a new currency, ZiG, to effectively replace the ZWL currency through the 2024 Monetary Policy Statement (attached below). The changes are quite significant as you would expect, however have a certain element of urgency attached with them. Unfortunately, this means that there are still many questions that the statement does not address. The statement is effective as of Friday 5th April 2023, however they have mentioned that there is a general 21 day period to sort out issues. Unfortunately, it's unclear as to what the issues are and how long it will take to solve the issues. Furthermore, it seems like all banks have immediately switched to ZiG, replacing ZWL accounts, as stipulated in the statement. As such, many of us will find that we do not have 21 days in reality to react to how things will need to work.

Over the weekend, Zimra released Public Notice 28 (also attached below), which outlines that ZIMRA is dealing with the various challenges that have come about due to this policy shift.  "The ZWL values shall be converted to ZiG once ZIMRA is ready with the currency conversion".  I believe they will take a couple of weeks to deal with the various issues that exists - this impacts the entire economy and every tax obligation, not just payroll (PAYE).  We have also been in contact to find out how to deal with the various challenges that we anticipate with this policy shift.   These questions are yet to be answered, but we have been assured that Zimra shall provide an update as soon as they have a handle on the situation.

There are several questions we have outstanding that I am certain will be added to as we go along.

• Will there be new ZiG Tax Tables?
• Are all payment to be converted to ZiG with a ZiG exchange rate as they were being converted with ZWL (e.g. minimum wages, tax credits, obligations) etc.
• Will there be a new NSSA limit set in ZiG or is it converted using an exchange rate

Please bear with us whilst we work to resolve these issues and make your payroll ready for use ASAP.

- Adam