Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZIMSTAT) will resume the publication of year-on-year inflation figures suspended by the government last year.
Finance Minister Professor Mthuli Ncube suspended the publishing of annual inflation for 12 months last year to February this year stating that the numbers do not reflect what is happening on the ground.
Economists have however said that Ncube suspended the annual inflation to hide the hyperinflation taking place in Zimbabwe.
The last recorded year-on-year inflation in February 2019 as measured by the all items Consumer Price Index (CPI) stood at 59.39 per cent up from 56.90 per cent in January the same year.
ZIMSTAT Director-General, Taguma Mahonde yesterday said, “Given that now, ZIMSTAT has a full base year of RTGS Consumer Price Indices, computation and publication of year-on-year rate of inflation will resume from the month of February 2020, to be published in March.”
“Further, ZIMSTAT will enhance its prices data collection exercise to engage more stakeholders across all the districts of Zimbabwe.”
The Director-General insinuated that developments in the monetary policy led to the suspension in the production of annual inflation statistics.
“In February 2019, the Government of Zimbabwe introduced the RTGS dollar at an exchange rate of US1:2.5 RTGS,” Mahonde explained.
“This was followed by Statutory instrument 142 of 2019 that ushered in a mono-currency regime.”
“These monetary policy reforms impacted on the computation of consumer Price Indices, as prices for the period prior to the introduction of the RTGS dollar were informed by a multi-currency regime.” Mahonde went on.
The annual inflation rate in Zimbabwe, in December 2019 was at 521.2 per cent from 480.7 per cent in the prior month according to analysts.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) in June last year measured Zimbabwe’s annualised inflation 175.66% up from 97.85 per cent in May, becoming the highest in the world that month.
Zimbabwe, 12 years ago, experienced its highest inflation in history, ranked the second-highest recorded of all times on world record.
