Prices shoot up 400% in one week
By Lance Guma
06 January 2007

The price of basic goods and services is reported to have gone up by 400 percent within one week, according to a central bank survey. The survey was conducted in several chain stores, retail outlets and wholesalers and looked at foodstuffs, rent, furniture, clothes and alcohol. The Reserve Bank is blaming an anticipated devaluation of the dollar on the increases, arguing it carried out the survey before and after the announcement of the monetary policy last Wednesday.

Analysts however say the activities of the Reserve Bank in printing money to fund activities outside the budget, plus corruption and bad political decisions were creating the inflationary environment. With teachers, doctors, nurses and other civil servants demanding salary increases, government is sitting on a financial time bomb. Cooking oil went up from Z$7 782 to Z$17 000 for a two litre bottle, tomatoes Z$1 440 to Z$4 400 per kilogram, and a 10 kilogram bag of roller meal rose to Z$2500 up from Z$1689. Commuter fares in places like Bulawayo have also gone up from $1000 to Z$1500 per trip.

From Bulawayo our correspondent Lionel Saungweme reports that people on the ground are not falling for the spin coming from the central bank via the state media. He says there is overwhelming consensus that the problems in the country are political and any attempt to blame businesses for profiteering are doomed to fall flat. Saungweme says some of the price increases quoted in the state media did not even represent what ordinary people on the ground are facing.

A Herald report says a standard size full chicken went up from Z$4 755 to Z$8 300 and yet as Saungweme pointed out the ‘unofficial’ price is way over Z$15 000. ‘This is the problem, authorities live in their own planet, with their own prices, and yet the common person faces the harsh reality of the black market everyday.’