Urban hunger now a reality – analysts

percent below normal market levels has left firms selling goods below cost, Zimbabwe Stock Exchange chairman Emmanuel Munyuki noted.
The price gap has led to job losses and has intensified food shortages, said another analyst Witness Chinyama.
He said it was high time government accepted that its pricing model did not work.
Chinyama spoke amid deepening bread shortages, as Zimbabwe failed to pay for wheat imports that have been docked at the Beira port for the past two months now.
The economic basis of running a bakery has been rendered “nonsensical”, Chinyama added. “They have to cut back. There have been some lay-offs.”
Food shortages – already widespread in rural areas because of a grain shortage – are now a real problem in urban areas.
Independent studies have found that the price of goods such as soap and vegetables have risen by up to 180 percent on a thriving black market over the past month alone.
Munyuki said demand for shares in financial services firms has helped the stock market withstand the country’s economic collapse.
Many investors have seen high returns from banking stocks, despite a poorer performance from shares in industrial and manufacturing concerns among the 71 companies listed on the stock market.
“We have survived by the grace of God,” Munyuki said. “There is nothing that anyone has done to explain why we are still more or less doing business and still making money. Other sectors have collapsed altogether… it is nothing less than a miracle of God.” – Chief Reporter