ng to 105 734,3 on the base of Average 2001=100. The index for December 2005 was 48 295,6 and the actual increase to the new April figure was 119,3%.
As a group, food prices rose most steeply during the month, driven by fresh vegetables at 42,3%, mineral waters & soft drinks at 40,2% and bread and cereals at 32,5%. The average increase for all foods was 27,9%. Other increases above the All Items average were rents at 24,8%, bicycles at 30,3%, fuels and lubricants at 35,1%, health & motor vehicle insurance at 48,1% and recreational items at 66,5%.
With the doubling of average prices, many employers, including government, have responded by awarding significant salary increases during May. Most of the salary increases to producers will have their impact on consumer goods prices from May onwards, so will not have been a significant part of the reason for the April increases. From the end of May, however, these and the public sector increases will considerably increase consumer buying power and will almost certainly generate demand in excess of supply for many goods, so a proportion of the coming inflation will arise directly from deepening scarcities.
Large subsidy payments will also be payable in the coming months, particularly for cotton, tobacco and maize, and the producers of these will add to demand pressures long before adding to the supplies of consumer goods. So from cost-push inflation, we are moving to demand-pull inflation that will generate many new cost elements and keep the vicious cycle in motion. – Consumer Council of Zimbabwe
Women strip to avoid arrest
MASVINGO – Police here fought running battles last week with street vendors in a clean-up blitz reminiscent of last year’s widely condemned Murambatsvina exercise.
At least 500 vendors were arrested during the skirmishes as police on horseback patrolled the streets in a show of force in what the vendors said was a clean-up exercise ahead of a visit to the town by Vice-President Joice Mujuru this week.
But there was drama in the streets as a group of elderly women stripped off their clothes in a bid to dissuade the police from arresting them. Police spokesman in Masvingo, Inspector Charles Munhungeyi, said the clean-up campaign had nothing to
do with Mujuru’s visit.
“The clean up exercise is continuing and has nothing to do with the vice-president’s visit,” he said
Meanwhile, the National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (NANGO) this week said the government had set up a new holding camp at Melfort Farm about 40km east of Harare to house thousands of homeless people rounded up in the capital.
Fambai Ndirande, an advocacy officer with NANGO, said the more than 10 000 people who were rounded up in Harare over the past few weeks were being fed on
vegetables and other foodstuffs seized from street vendors in the city.
Contacted for comment, police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena declined to reveal where those who were rounded up were being kept. He also said there was nothing new about the latest removals. – ZimOnline
Japan condemns Malawi’s ‘soft treatment’
HARARE – Japan has joined the widespread international condemnation of Malawi’s decision to name a major road constructed with European Union funding after Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.
Japan – one of the richest countries in the world and a member of the G8 – says it is not pleased with President Bingu wa Mutharika’s “soft treatment” of Mugabe, condemned internationally as a dictator. The Tokyo government has also expressed disapproval of the political and financial support that China and the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) is rendering to Mugabe’s regime. “By morally and materially supporting Mugabe and his regime, Malawi and anyone else, will be setting a bad precedent,” Dr Sadaharu Kataoka, advisor to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, said in Tokyo. He said Japan and other members of the world’s eight most industrialised
nations would maintain a hard line policy against Mugabe by sustaining travel and economic sanctions on the Harare administration. In a reaction to the Japanese criticism, Malawi’s Information Minister said: “We do not regret honouring Mugabe and people from other countries should not interfere with issues that do not concern them. Malawi is not going to follow whatever they say.” Kataoka said equally disturbing was South African President Thabo Mbeki’s failure to whip his northern neighbour into line with expectations of the international community and the people of Zimbabwe. – Political reporter