ing to companies countrywide.
After failing to announce inflation figures for more than three months citing capacity problems, the CSO yesterday announced that the country’s annual inflation figure plummeted by about 1000 percentage points from the July figure of 7 634.8% to land at 6 592.8 percent in August.
“I donot believe that.They merely based the figures on the background of the price blitz but failed to measure the real prices which were prevailing on the black market.
“Their calculations were based on assumptions since there were only a few goods in the shops,most of the goods in that list were not there although the government stipulated prices were readily available”, John Robertson said.
The economists said the figures should not be taken seriously as exorbitant black market figures were the real pointer of what they called “real inflation”.
They said the slow down,the first in more than 12 months,was “manufactured” to give credit to President Robert Mugabe’s price-control programmes imposed in July after business engaged in
incessant price increases.
Prices of such basic items as bread, sugar, milk and soap-all of them components of the CSO bread basket-were slashed by half before a blanket freeze was imposed on them.
The items immediately vanished from the shops only to re-emerge on the black market where they were going at exorbitant prices,usually between 100 and 300 percent of the official price a situation which prevails to date even after government’s approval of a 20 percent price increase on all products.
For a long time now,independent analysts have been accusing the CSO of allegedly suppressing real inflation figures to avoid anarchy among the country’s ordinary citizens who are the prime victims of the country’s eight year economic and political recession- CAJ News.