The Zimbabwe National Statistical Agency (ZimStat) says the country will resume the calculation annual inflation figures from the end of this month.
In August last year, Finance and Economic Development Minister Mthuli Ncube announced that Zimbabwe will not be publishing annual inflation numbers until they have established a proper calculation base.
Last February, the Government removed the 1:1 peg between the local currency and the United States dollar.
Said ZimStat director-general Mr Taguma Mahonde in a statement:
“In February 2019, the Government of Zimbabwe introduced the RTGS dollar at an exchange rate of US$1:2,5RTGS. This was followed by Statutory Instrument 142 of 2019 that ushered in a mono-currency regime.
“These monetary policy reforms impacted on the computation of consumer price indices, as prices for the period prior to the introduction of the RTGS dollar were informed by multi-currency. As such, computation of year-on-year rate of inflation was no longer comparing like with like.
“Resultantly, computation and publication of the year-on-year rate of inflation was deferred for a period of 12 months to February 2020. Given that now ZimStat has a full base year of RTGS consumer price indices, computation and publication of year-on-year rate of inflation will resume from the month of February 2020, to be published in March 2020. Further, ZimStat will enhance its prices data collection exercise to engage more stakeholders across all the districts of Zimbabwe.”