Editor,

RE: "Dollar continues to wreck havoc on East African currencies” (The New Times, August 2).

The quantity of petrodollars hasn't declined at all. If anything it has risen as the US buys more foreign oil to replenish its strategic stocks and as US production has collapsed following the Saudi decision to flood the market which knocked crude prices to extremely low levels and pushing a large and growing number of high-cost US producers into bankruptcy and out of business.

Among other consequences, this has raised the dollar exchange rate as more and more oil importers acquire dollars with which to buy oil, which is almost always priced in dollars.

Mwene Kalinda