Who wants to be a trillionaire...? I don't...

Zimbabwe's central bank is under pressure to lop off zeros from the country's beleaguered currency and ease a transactional crisis triggered by its loss of value.

Bankers said they were having their worst nightmares dealing with Zimbabwe dollar transactions after inflation pushed revenue and incomes to trillion dollar levels.

“The issue of digits is the prerogative of the governor and I will be coming back to the nation with an announcement soon,” Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor Gideon Gono told tobacco merchants, buyers and their bankers recently.

This was after concerns that the accumulation of zeros on the country's currency due to rampant inflation, currently estimated at 1 700 000% year on year for May, was creating problems for merchants and bankers, who were having to open multiple accounts for clients banking in excess of $10 trillion in a single bank account.

According to Stephen Gwasira, CEO of the ZABG banking group, most banking systems could only accommodate transactions of up to $10 trillion per bank account.

Any amounts above that caused a digit overflow.

Therefore, bulk cash movers had to open multiple bank accounts, which many business operators said were difficult to manage.

Gono lopped three zeroes off the Zimbabwe dollar in August 2006 after inflation ruin the currency, pushing transactions to billions of dollars and making many Zimbabweans millionaires.

However, the zeros appear to have come back with a vengeance, with some transactions going into trillion dollar levels and the poorest Zimbabweans now billionaires.

Some companies have started reporting balance sheet sizes of quadrillion dollars.

Retail outlets have already taken the decision to remove six zeros from all transactions due to the accumulation of zeros in daily transactions. Notices like “all transactions in this shop are in '000 000” are now common in most supermarkets.

Visa points of sale terminals have been removed from most supermarkets because they are failing to process above Z$1bn per transaction. Customers making purchases above Z$1bn had to transact more than once on the terminals. A purchase of Z$10bn, worth two bars of washing soap, would require at least 11 transactions on a Visa terminal.