HARARE, May 13 (Xinhua) -- The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has imported about 400 million U.S. dollars cash in the first four months of this year to ease cash shortages in the economy, governor John Mangudya said last week.

He told the state-run weekly Sunday Mail newspaper that bank queues were expected to minimize within the next two months as cash flows improve from tobacco and gold exports.

The central bank will also draw from the 1.5 billion dollars extended to it by the Afreximbank in December 2017, he said.

"What I want to promise the nation is that within he next two months, the queues are going to be minimized.

Zimbabwe has been facing bank note shortages since 2016 due to a widening trade deficit and runaway government expenditure.

The governor also said the biggest challenge facing Zimbabwe in relation to the cash crunch was poor circulation of money.

"If the money was circulating, we would not be having the cash challenges that we have. Zimbabweans are looking at foreign currency as a store of value and not as something that they should circulate," he said.

Instead of circulating the money in the country, many people in the country were exporting the cash through paying for digital satellite television, school fees and shopping in foreign countries, among many other means of cash flight, the governor said.

In 2016, the central bank introduced local bond notes to ease the cash crunch but these have not helped much since these are being put into the market sparingly and in tandem with the value of exports to avoid stoking inflation.

Currently, 350 million bond notes and 40 million bond coins are in circulation.

Initially trading at par with the U.S. dollar, the bond notes have significantly lost value to the greenback on the black market.