Zimbabwe’s inflation doubles in two months to 191%
A man counts a wad of the new Zimbabwean ten-dollar notes received from an ATM outside a bank in Harare on May 20, 2020. AFP FILE PHOTO
HARAE — Zimbabwe’s annual inflation rate quickened to 191.6 percent in June, more than doubling the consumer price increases of two months ago, official statistics showed Saturday.
Inflation which was at 96.4 percent in April, crept up to nearly 200 percent as prices of cooking oil and bread are leaping higher as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Rising prices revive memories of hyperinflation seen more than a decade ago when inflation spiralled so far out of control that the central bank in 2008 issued a 100-trillion-dollar note, which has now become a collectors’ item.
The government then ditched the local currency and adopted the US dollar and the South African rand as legal tender.
But in 2019 the government reintroduced the Zimbabwean dollar, which has rapidly been declining in value.
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