By DPA
Harare : Zimbabwe’s inflation rate for 2007 hit new records, according to the latest figures, with annual inflation in December going beyond 66,000 percent and month-on-month registering 240 percent.
President Robert Mugabe’s government has banned the release of official inflation figures since September 2007 when annual inflation reached 7,900 percent. Finance Minister Samuel Mumbengegwi claimed that there weren’t sufficient goods in the shop to compile data.
However, according to leaked documents from the Central Statistical Office, the figure for December was 66,212 percent, against 26,470 percent in November, according to figures from the central bank, released in defiance of the finance ministry ban.
The previous highest measure for monthly inflation was 140 percent. Zimbabwe’s economy has been in a state of hyperinflation marked by monthly inflation of above 50 percent with the central bank forced to print increasingly higher denominations of the currency, the Zimbabwe dollar.
In January the bank issued its highest denomination of 10,000,000 Zimbabwe dollars but it has been rapidly undermined to the point where a note can buy eight eggs.
“If it was nearly 70,000 in December, it should easily be 100,000 percent by now,” commented a commercial banker who asked not to be named.
The International Monetary Fund estimated year-end inflation at 150,000 percent, and says the lower Zimbabwean official rate is distorted by measuring prices according to levels fixed by the government, rather than by the prices charged in the semi-legal black market where most trading is done.
Economists blame the accelerating rate of inflation on Mugabe’s policy of printing cash to pay for shortfalls in regime spending and price controls that create shortages of goods and push up prices.