Nieuws 4 inflatie
overgenomen van CNN 1 February, 2008
Zimbabwe inflation tops 24,000 percent, officially
  
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) -- Zimbabwe's central bank has revealed that its annual inflation has climbed to 24,470 percent, by far the highest in the world -- but far short of independent estimates of 150,000 percent.

In the first announcement on official inflation for four months, Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono said Friday that inflation remained "the most devastating macroeconomic imbalance in the country" affecting all sectors of the population.

In early October the state central statistical office gave the last official inflation figure at just below 8,000 percent.

A Zimbabwean man counts a big stack of money to buy some bananas in Harare in January.

It then suspended its monthly updates on inflation because there were not enough goods in the shortage-stricken shops to calculate the regular basket of goods.

Gono criticized independent inflation calculations as "distorted and imprecise wild guesses" that caused damage in business planning and hurt the nation's credibility. He said the official figures reflected "actual information."

However, most Zimbabweans were likely to be skeptical of Gono's official inflation rate.

The state Herald newspaper raised its cover price threefold Friday, to 3 million Zimbabwe dollars (60 cents at the dominant black market exchange rate), the third increase since October.

It represented an increase of more than 200,000 percent in the price of a single copy of the daily paper since January 2007.

Zimbabwe Newspapers chief executive Justin Mutasa said, in a front-page announcement, that the increase was forced by sharp hikes in the cost of all raw materials, transportation and wages. The price of newsprint alone quadrupled since the last cover price increase in December, he said.

Supermarket till slips show the price of chicken rose more than 236,000 percent to 15 million Zimbabwe dollars ($3) a kilogram between January 2007 and January 2008. Scarce eggs rose by 153,000 percent in the same period.

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One of the lowest increases of about 64,000 percent was on sugar, bringing independent estimates for overall food inflation to about 164,000 percent.

School fees increased last month by 600 percent, and the price of scarce gasoline trebled in the past week. Rentals for housing and accommodation have soared.

"Yes, our inflation is the highest in the world, but this should not tempt us to sweep our blemishes under the carpet," Gono said.

He said that, with immediate effect, individuals and companies could write checks of up to a maximum limit of 10 billion Zimbabwe dollars. The previous limit was 500 million Zimbabwe dollars.

Zimbabwe is facing acute shortages of food, hard currency, gasoline and most basic goods in the worst economic crisis since independence in 1980.

Gono appealed to his fellow countrymen to exercise economic patriotism to deal with the crisis before the 2010 World Cup soccer tournament in neighboring South Africa, and to end the black market, daily power and water outages, food shortages, multiple exchange rates and multiple interest rates and "rampant corruption, indiscipline and mistrust across the board."

"As a country we cannot afford the world to congregate in southern Africa with our economy being an eyesore" in the region and in the whole of Africa, he said.