Zimbabwe’s main consumer watchdog said on Friday it was greatly concerned at a surge in the cost of living, which has shot up by 49,5% in the last month.
There were huge increases in the cost of soap, vegetables, milk, rice and the staple maize-meal in the month of February, the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe (CCZ) said in its monthly report.
It now costs Z$686 115 for a family of six to meet its basic needs per month, the council said.
That means that a recent salary hike for disgruntled teachers — up from Z$84 000 to about Z$520 000 per month including allowances — will still not allow many of them to live in dignity.
The CCZ blamed the price hikes on unscrupulous businessmen who, it said, were trying to protect themselves from the effects of a four-month price freeze supposed to start on Thursday.
This has exposed many consumers to poverty as their salaries have been lagging behind while prices shoot to astronomical levels, the watchdog said.
There is as yet little indication the freeze will be followed by most companies.
Zimbabwe has been wracked by soaring inflation for most of the last six years, bringing hardship to ordinary Zimbabweans and effectively reducing the professional middle-class to penury. The annual inflation rate in the country is currently the highest in the world at 1 593,6%.
New banknote
On Thursday, Zimbabwe cranked up the face value of its highest banknote fivefold as black-market trading in scarce gasoline and hard currency spiralled.
On the illegal market, a single United States dollar bought up to Z$8 000, up from Z$5 000 last month. The fixed official exchange rate is Z$250 dollars to US$1.
Gasoline sold for up to 20 times the official price on Thursday, an increase of about 30% in the past week.
The central bank released a new Z$50 000 note. The new note bought just one-sixteenth of what it would have bought a year ago.
In August, the central bank slashed three zeros from the currency in a bid to eliminate the need to use bags and large bundles of currency for the smallest purchases and to free accounting systems, calculators and computers from the burden of coping with numbers in multi-millions.
Earlier this week, central bank governor Gideon Gono acknowledged the country was hungry and broke, largely as result of a chaotic and often violent land-reform programme since 2000, which turned over more than 5 000 white-owned commercial farms to black people in the former regional breadbasket. — Sapa-dpa, AP