HARARE — Zimbabwe's finance minister Tendai Biti vowed on Monday that he would quit if he is asked to return the local dollar which was abandoned as the country fought a losing battle with hyperinflation.
"If someone is to ask me bring back the Zimbabwe dollar, then there will be a vacancy on the sixth floor of the government complex and I will go back to my law firm," Biti was quoted as saying by the state-owned Herald newspaper.
"The Zimbabwe dollar has been an instrument of arbitrage and rent-seeking behaviour. It had become an instrument of theft so we can't allow that."
He said debate on the possible return of the Zimbabwe dollar should only start in November next year.
Biti, a lawyer, was appointed finance minister in February in a power-sharing government of the country's three major political parties - long-ruling President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and a breakaway faction of the MDC led by Arthur Mutambara.
The compromise government sought to ease political tensions in the wake of a contentious presidential run-off election and to mend the country's
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