STAFF WRITER
Zimbabwe’s annual inflation accelerated to 837.53% in July, up from 737.26% in June,on the back of an increase in the prices of goods and services, the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency has said.
Month on month inflation in July was 35.53%, up from 31.7% in June.
Zimbabwe appears to be losing the inflation battle despite putting a disinflationary programme in place.
Inflation is one of the key measures of the financial wellbeing of an economy.
The runaway inflation affects what consumers can buy with their money. If wages don’t keep up with the high inflation, purchasing power, and standard of living falls.
Prices of basic commodities continue to rocket due to the collapse of the local currency on both the formal and parallel market.
The Zimbabwe dollar officially trades at ZWL$82.56:US$1, after government abandoned a currency peg of 25:1, introduced in March this year.
The surge is likely to cripple local firms because input costs continue to skyrocket.
The issue of price hikes is making planning difficult for local companies.
