HARARE, Zimbabwe — It’s confusing.
The pale blue bank note that says 1,000,000 Zimbabwean dollars really means 10,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Yes, that’s 10 quintillion, taking into account the 13 zeros Zimbabwe’s central bank has lopped off in the past couple of years to make the currency somewhat more manageable.
Every time the zeros get out of hand, the Reserve Bank scythes away 00000s. The largest note, Z$100,000,000,000, released in July and useless within weeks, looked so bizarre with all the zeros squeezed in that it’s a collector’s item.
Regardless, inflation is soaring so fast that it is hard to figure out what a Z$1 million note is worth on a given day.
Somewhere between July’s Z$100 billion note and the more recent zero-reduced Z$1 million note, it’s easy to get mixed up. Even more confusing are the wildly different exchange rates.
Zimbabweans chuckle when they see a foreigner bumbling with their currency. They launch into long, looping explanations that leave you lassoed by the zeros, and more confused than when you started.
It’s difficult to resist just holding up the Z$1,000,000 note and asking a reliable local, “What’s this worth?”
Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation, the highest ever known, is officially more than 230 million percent, but some economists place it in the quadrillions. It seems a matter of time before people will be grappling with octillions, nonillions, decillions, duodecillions and more.
It would seem easy enough to just pay by debit card, but nothing is easy here. In many supermarkets, bank debit cards don’t work, either because there’s no power or the electronic transfer systems in banks are overloaded.
People stand in line for hours at banks to withdraw the maximum weekly limit of $Z100 million, about $10 U.S. on the black market, not enough for bread.
