The president said he would try to pay the country's international debts, ease restrictions on imports, and make it easier for Zimbabweans to get hard currency.
It has encouraged America and other countries to take over part of Ukraine's allocation of special drawing rights at the fund, in effect channelling hard currency to the government in Kyiv.
The health minister Mrs Marzieh Dastjerdi had complained that the government had allocated hard currency to the import of luxury cars and not enough to the import of drugs.
Those with hard currency also instantly became relatively richer after the 2009 currency experiments, which had the effect of severely devaluing the North Korean won.
Iran is pressed for hard currencies. Oil exports have been reduced to less than a half in the past six months as a result of European and American sanctions.
Hard currency would stay scarce, according to this view, which in turn justified steering investment towards industries that replaced foreign goods, rather than those that served foreign markets.