Former Industry and International Trade minister Nkosana Moyo has slammed bond notes, arguing the surrogate currency is “not the answer” to the country’s deepening cash crisis.

“The answer is not bond notes,” Moyo said in an interview with Capital26free, a podcast network station.

The respected economist — famed for publicly speaking out against attacks on businesses and factories by war veterans and later uncharacteristically resigning from President Robert Mugabe’s Cabinet about a year after his appointment — said “the answer is to stop the haemorrhage of where our money went and continues to go. Once we stop that, the issue of bond notes will not even arise”.

“ . . . somebody is responsible for our money disappearing from the banks and they need to give us an honest answer,” Moyo said.

“When we dollarised, we literally — all of us without exception — zeroed our savings to nothing. So every single dollar that is in my account, I earned from that day onwards . . . where did it go?” he queried.

“The starting point is you need to ask the banks, because the banks have not been honest with us, where did our money go? Because if I put my money in the bank and it’s not there, it must have gone somewhere. It’s either the bank lent that money recklessly and lost it; or they gave it to somebody else. They need to account for it and that’s our starting point,” Moyo said.