Zimbabwe has set up a task force to monitor prices of basic goods and probe shortages fuelling the country’s runaway inflation, a Cabinet minister said Thursday.
“The task force is being set up to monitor the prices [of goods] and their disappearance from the formal market,” Industry and International Trade Minister Obert Mpofu told Agence France-Presse.
“It was approved by Cabinet on Tuesday. We have realised that firms are hiking their prices almost everyday.”
“The task force was set up in line with the signing of the incomes and stabilisation protocol.”
President Robert Mugabe last month signed the National Incomes and Pricing Commission Act as part of a clutch of measures aimed to rein in galloping price rises, which are believed to have reached 4 500%.
Mpofu said the task force will compel manufacturers to display selling prices for controlled goods.
The creation of the task force came amid a spate of price increases over the past three weeks with a litre of petrol going up from Z$60 000 (US$240 at the official rate but 41 US cents at the black market) to Z$180 000 and bus fares from the city centre to the suburbs jumping more than 200%.
Analysts, however, warned that the appointment of the task force to control prices will spawn a burgeoning parallel market of the monitored products.
“These populist policies do not work,” independent economist Victor Zirebgwa said.
“The parallel market of the products they want to monitor will simply crop up. I am yet to see a regulated commodity that is efficiently supplied.”
Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries Callisto Jokonya said: “Controls will not give you results.”
The Southern African country is in the midst of an economic recession characterised by high inflation, massive unemployment and chronic shortages of foreign currency and basic goods like fuel and the staple cornmeal, largely blamed on Mugabe’s government.
Mugabe, however, blames the woes on targeted sanctions imposed on himself and members of his inner circle by Western powers. — AFP