Maravi

Zimbabweans in rare piece of good news

Zimbabweans in rare piece of good news
Written by Kingsley Kaswende in Harare
Wednesday, March 25, 2009 3:17:32 PM

Zimbabweans on Tuesday afternoon received a rare piece of good news, as the Central Statistical Office (CSO) announced that the country had attained negative inflation as at February 2009.

The development comes as a result of a switch from using Zimbabwe dollars to US dollars and other foreign currencies last month.

CSO head Moffat Nyoni announced that the month-on-month inflation rate in February 2009 was recorded at -3.1 percent, shedding off 0.8 percentage points on the January rate of -2.3 per cent.

This means that prices, as measured by the all-items Consumer Price Index (CPI), decreased by an average of 3.1 per cent from January 2009 to February 2009. It means an item priced at US $100 in January cost US $97 in February.

It was a rare piece of good news, as compared to the events of the past decade, where prices of goods kept skyrocketing due to hyperinflation caused by the worthless, and now redundant, Zimbabwe dollar.

Unable to cope with the combination of the depreciation of the local currency and runaway hyperinflation that hovered in the sextillion per cent region according to independent estimates in the latter part of 2008, the Zimbabwean government decided to turn to the use of US dollars in a bid to stabilise the economy.

Until the Zimbabwe dollar became virtually obsolete in recent weeks, Zimbabwe's last official inflation rate in the local currency was given as 231 million percent in August 2008, by far the highest in the world.

According to the CSO, no annual inflation has yet been calculated in US dollar terms, as it is difficult to make comparisons between Zimbabwe dollar and US dollar variants.

The month-on-month food and non-alcoholic beverages inflation stood at -3.85 per cent in February 2009. The month-on-month non-food inflation stood at -2.80 percent shedding off 0.18 percentage points on the January rate of 2.62 per cent.

The Food Poverty Line (FPL) for an average of five persons in January was US $177 while the Total Consumption Poverty Line (TCPL) for an average five persons stood at US$552 in January 2009.

"This means that an average household required that much to purchase both food and non-food items for the, not to be deemed poor," a CSO statement read.

Labels: INFLATION, NEOCOLONIALISM

posted by MrK @ 3:17 PM