Zimbabwe’s stock market has shed $6 billion while its main index has slumped 40 per cent since last Wednesday when the military seized power leading to the fall of Robert Mugabe.
The main industrial index was at 315.12 points compared with 527.27 points on Wednesday last week when the military announced its takeover and put former president Mugabe under house arrest.
On Thursday the index fell 4.4 per cent, stock exchange data showed.
The Zimbabwe Stock Exchange had been on a rapid rise in the last two months amid fears of a return to hyperinflation in an economy suffering acute shortages of foreign exchange, reports Reuters.
But analysts said the market had entered a period of correction on investor optimism of a change in economic policy in a post-Mugabe era.
Market capitalisation was $9 billion, down from $15 billion last week, bourse data showed.
On the currency front, black market rates for buying cash dollars softened further on Thursday.
Buying $100 using electronic transfer cost $150, down from $180 last week. Some black market traders said they were not buying dollars at all, anticipating further softening of rates.
Zimbabwe adopted the US dollar in 2009, along with Britain’s pound and the South African rand, to tame inflation that topped out at 500 billion per cent.
