Beer deliveries resumed on Friday after the Zimbabwean government backed down on a price freeze on local lager brands and allowed producers to raise prices of some other goods.
Stores and bars were calculating a new retail price for beer as the government conceded it was being sold at a loss six weeks after an official edict ordered price cuts of about 50% on all goods and services in a measure to tame rampant official inflation of 4 500 per cent, the highest in the world.
The price cuts have left shelves bare of cornmeal, bread, meat, cooking oil and other basics. Businesses argued they were being told to sell their goods below the cost of producing them.
Beer disappeared earlier this week. It had been selling in liquor stores at about Z$33 000 a bottle.
In a statement on a new range of increased prices on Friday, the Industry Ministry acknowledged it cost about the same amount to produce the standard bottle of beer without taking into account wholesale distribution, transportation costs and the retailer’s permitted margin of profit.
The statement raised the price of bread by about 30% and the cornmeal staple by about 10%. Beef went up by between 10% and 50%, depending on the quality.
The biggest increase of about 300% went to cement manufacturers, who had pointed out that the government price decreed on June 26 covered only the cost of the cement bag and not its contents.
”These prices have been arrived at after comprehensive interrogation of the pricing formulae used by the relevant industry sector and are intended to improve the supply of goods on the market,” Industry Minister Obert Mpofu said, the state media reported on Friday.
Many factories prepared on Friday to shut down for the whole of next week, coinciding with a two-day national holiday on Monday and Tuesday, honouring guerrillas who fought in the bush war that led to independence in 1980.
Executives said acute shortages of gasoline crippled commuter transport services that led to worker absenteeism, while shortages of hard currency and materials, as well as daily power and water outages, influenced businesses to take a longer break.
A least 7 000 executives, business managers and traders have been arrested since June 26 for defying the price cuts and alleged profiteering.
The government holds a one-fifth stake in Delta Corporation, one of the nation’s biggest corporate conglomerates and owners of the National Breweries, the only beer maker.
Delta managers said brewing of beer was shut down this week until a viable price was agreed with the government.
Delta, seen to have massive corporate clout, could have withstood a lengthy closure of its brewing operations, managers said.
The government was faced with a long absence of beer, starting with a symbolic holiday celebrating independence from colonial-era white rule, in a nation of mainly beer drinkers. — Sapa-AP