Maravi

(NEWZIMBABWE) Inflation slows to 2.76 percent in March
15/04/2013 00:00:00
by Roman Moyo

ZIMBABWE’S National Statistics Agency (Zimstats) has announced that the inflation rate shed 0.22 percentage points on the February figure of 2.98 percent to 2.76 percent in March.

Finance Minister Tendai Biti said the drop was due to a decline in the value of South Africa's rand against the dollar, making Zimbabwe's imports from its giant neighbour much cheaper.

Zimbabwe uses a mixture of the dollar and rand, having scrapped its own currency in 2009 to end years of hyperinflation.

Zimstats said the year-on-year food and non-alcoholic beverages inflation prone to transitory shocks stood at 4.18 percent while the non-food inflation rate was 2.04 percent.

The monthly food and beverages rate of inflation for March 2013 stood at 0.32 percent, shedding 1.08 percentage points on the February rate of 1.40 percent.

Month-on-month non-food inflation was pegged at 0.15 percent, shedding 0.57 percentage points on the February rate of 0.72 percent.

The month-on-month inflation rate in March 2013 shed 0.74 percentage points from February’s figure of 0.95 percent to close at 0.21 percent.

This means prices, as measured by the all-items consumer price index, increased by an average of 2.76 percentage points between March 2012 and March 2013.

The consumer price index for the month ending March 2013 stood at 101.2 compared with 101.0 in February 2013 and 98.5 in March 2012.

"The implementation of COICOP classification is also part of the harmonisation project of consumer price indices in different regions, such as Sadc, as all member states are supposed to adopt the new procedure to enable inter-country comparisons of the Consumer Price Index and the rate of inflation," said ZimStat.

Labels: INFLATION, ZIMSTATS

posted by MrK @ 3:40 AM