Zimbabwe’s Annual Inflation Leaps to 4.8 Percent in April

Zimbabwe’s annual inflation rose to 4.8 percent in April — from 3.5 percent the previous month, according to data released by the Central Statistical Office on Friday.

The CSO, however, said the indicative month-on-month inflation eased from 1.1 percent in March to 0.1 percent in April, thanks to a significant drop in food prices.
A coalition government formed by President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai last year has stabilized the once free-falling southern African economy.

A raft of pro-market macroeconomic measures introduced by the government soon after its inauguration in February 2009 saw inflation declining from a world-record 500 billion percent at the end of 2008.

The decision by the new Harare regime to discard the country’s free-falling currency, the Zimbabwe dollar, and adopt a basket of hard currencies as legal tender also helped stabilize prices of products which became readily available in shops and destroyed a thriving black market that had kept pressure on inflation.

The economic stability is however being threatened by bickering among Zimbabwe’s coalition partners amid reports that hardliners from Mugabe’s ZANU PF party want to frustrate any reforms pushed through by Tsvangirai’s party.

Observers fears that the squabbles will ultimately derail the unity government or slow down the momentum achieved over the past 15 months.

Bickering over a controversial black empowerment law has already cost Zimbabwe millions of dollars worth of foreign investment as investors wait for finalization of regulations that would see non-Zimbabweans surrendering at least 51 percent of the companies to local business.

Source African Press Agency