ZIMBABWE’s government faced renewed pressure this week to devalue the country’s embattled currency with warnings that attempts to prop up the Zim Dollar were seriously harming exports. Leading Zimbabwean economist Eric Bloch said on Tuesday that the country’s fiscal policy had overvalued the Zimbabwe Dollar (Z$) by up to 50% against the currencies of major trading partners. The discrepancy between government’s attempts to peg the Zim Dollar at Z$55 to US$1 and the currency’s freefall in the “real world” had, Bloch said, created a massive currency black-market that was beginning to damage the national economy. Bloch, who is also an industrialist in his own right, warned that major exporters such as the tobacco industry believed they would only be internationally competitive if the local currency was devalued to more “realistic levels”. “This is the only way government can save export companies from imminent collapse. The immediate devaluation of the currency would at least address the rising input costs we all face,” he said. Many local companies, including airlines, are already pegging their prices in US Dollars.