MALAWI’S inflation rate has shot up to 51,2%, prompting a run on bank interests rates. Charles Chuka, a senior official at the country’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of Malawi, says the inflation rate was prompted by the mid-August fall in the external value of the kwacha which led to increases in fuel prices and electricity tarrifs. Inflation was running at 13,7% in January last year. It hovered around 23% when the kwacha fell last August from 27 to 45 to the US dollar. The increases in basic commodity prices have been instituted by the government at the insistence of International Monetary Fund advisers.