Yesterday we reported on the lack of coverage for USD deposits by the Deposit Protection Corporation _(DPC)_. And a lot of people weren't too surprised that this provision was not set by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) and Ministry of Finance.

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Microsoft is launching the next generation of Windows (11) operating system, tomorrow the 24th of June 2021. We browsed the internet to see what was being said about it and here are our thoughts...

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Itel has been the butt of many jokes for the longest time in Zimbabwe. Most of them have been all in good fun but others are a little malicious. It's good to remember that Transsion, the company that owns Itel, Tecno and Infinix, commands 37% of the smartphone market in Africa according to Counterpoint's research.

For reviews on Itel, Tecno and other smartphones brands, you can check out our YouTube channel with the link here.

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So earlier this week a German company called Amaetheon Agri was given a licence to grow Marijuana/Cannabis for scientific and medical use. This sparked an internal debate about the whole cannabis licence system in Zimbabwe.

The fee is exclusionary by design and this is a bad thing because the govt and economy could be making a lot more money if there were tiered licences ranging from recreational and small scale growers all the way to commercial operations. Cannabis is after all a billion-dollar industry, valued at around US$20 billion and it is projected to grow to US$70.6 billion by the end of the decade.

And another thing, why is there no growers licence for tobacco which is undoubtedly more harmful but there is one for cannabis which by comparison is not.

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Earlier this week, Minister for Finance Mthuli Ncube said that Zimbabwe had a budget surplus of ZWL$9.8 billion in Q1 of 2021. A budget surplus is essentially the government making more money from income like taxes and the likes than it is spending. Now there are many ways to interpret this especially with COVID-19 being an inescapable reality both on its impact on business and how it should influence government spending.

Link to ZIMRA's Q1 2021 report is in the link here

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Huawei's Harmony OS has been in the works for some time. Murmurs of the iOS and Android competitor date back to the mid-2010s and its imminent arrival will be a welcome addition to the smartphone and appliance market.

However with Huawei's app gallery light on apps and it being outside the well known Android and iOS duopoly does it stand a chance outside the Chinese market?

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Our resident Huawei fanboy Edwin recently did a review of the Chinese device maker's G2 smartwatch you can check that out in the link here. If you want to hear what Edwin thinks of the Harmony OS outside our interrogation you can check out his latest video with the link here.

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The City of Harare earlier this week went on a bit of a rant on Twitter where it issued a number of orders like dog licences, civilians not being allowed to control traffic at intersections with dead signal lights and many more.

We couldn't resist adding our own commentary on it after seeing some of the replies retweets and comments left by Hararians on The City Of Harare's tweets.

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This time last week we got the news that the government had issued Statutory Instrument 127 of 2021. In SI 127 are a raft of new measures that govern the rules of forex in the country not only for those participating in RBZ's Forex Auction but for the nation at large. And as I am sure you are aware, there was massive backlash from all corners of Zimbabwe. Pundits, experts and armchair economists alike said that this will increase prices, increase the scarcity of USD in formal channels, inconvenience businesses and encourage black market forex deals.

Here's our take of one week under SI 127 of 2021 and what we have seen since it was announced.

Recommended reading:

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So... yesterday the Ministry of Commerce and the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA) released a joint statement that extended the grace period for the ban on imports of second-hand cars that are 10 years or older till June 30th 2021. Now, this isn't too surprising because the reasons for the ban didn't make a lick of sense.

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Yesterday the government announced SI 127 of 2021 which put new rules and penalties of forex use. The Statutory Instrument looks like it was designed to stop businesses from pricing goods and services above the auction-rate more than anything else... The response by businesses as we saw in a tweet by journalist Hopewell Chin'ono is to increase local currency prices so that they don't lose out to the prevailing 1:85 official rate as mandated by SI 127 of 2021.

In light of this, we decided to go over some of the other potential consequences that may come up because of SI 127 of 2021 for consumers and businesses.

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