Becoming a millionaire in Zimbabwe is easy these days, but wallets and purses have given way to car boots and suitcases as the crucial accessory for carrying wads of nearly worthless cash.
As the country battles hyper-inflation and grinding fuel and foreign exchange shortages amid a seven-year economic slump, ordinary citizens have resigned themselves to wry humour to deal with the situation.
”In Zimbabwe, nothing goes down except the country,” is a saying often heard on the streets of the capital as inflation hovers around 1 200%, pushing basic commodities beyond the reach of many.
Despite a dip in inflation from 1 193% to 1 184%, a figure experts say is the highest in the world outside of a war zone, consumer prices continue to climb.
Zimbabwe’s largest financial note is the green Zim$100 000 bearer cheque, but at the equivalent value of about one US dollar or 78 euro cents it’s not enough to buy a loaf of bread, let alone a shopping basket.
Basic foodstuffs and essential drugs are in short supply, and electricity and water have also joined the long queue of hard-to-find items.
The Consumer Council of Zimbabwe (CCZ) said recently that living costs for a family of five surged to Zim$68-million ($671, â,¬527) in June from the May figure of Zim$49,1-million.
The economic and financial crisis has slashed consumer spending owing to the lack of disposable income, the CCZ said.
”Consumer spending and patterns have been on the decline due to economic conditions,” CCZ said in its monthly economic update.
”Therefore, employers are called upon to give their workers salaries that take into cognisance the cost of living.”
Economists are increasingly vocal in their criticism of the government’s handling of the economy.
”For the greater part of Zimbabwe’s 26 years of independence, the government has demonstrated remarkably great skill of distancing itself from realities,” wrote independent economist Erich Bloch in a recent newspaper column.
”Anything and everything that may be negative in the economy is either due to the whims of nature, or evil machinations of the international community, the political opposition and those of other races,” he said in reference to explanations given by government for the current crunch.
Analysts wondered whether any forward planning was possible in an economy that has contracted by more than a third over the past seven years.
”Who plans in such an environment?” asked Fungai Tarira, an investment analyst with the Harare-based Imara Asset management.
”It’s a very difficult environment to operate in, we just wake up and go to work. There is no long-term planning and with a bit of luck on our hands we are surviving,” he told Agence France-Presse.
President Robert Mugabe, who has been in power since Zimbabwe’s independence from Britain in 1980, has blamed the country’s recession on target sanctions imposed on himself and his inner circle by Western powers.
He has ruled out any outside intervention to help solve the crisis.
Benard Mufute, an economist with Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries said: ”The way forward for the country is for greater political commitment, but right now we don’t see it.
”Others would want to say we are being sabotaged, but far from it we have to live within our own means and liberalise the exchange rate to get everything moving forward.”
Zimbabwe has pegged its dollar at 101 196 to the US dollar since April, but on the thriving underground market the latter currency readily changes hands at the rate of 450 000 to one. – Sapa-AFP