Former Finance Minister Tendai Biti has said the recent move by the government to measure inflation using a weighted average of items priced in Zimbabwean dollars and United States dollars is insincere and an attempt to conceal rising inflation.
Minister of Finance and Economic Development Mthuli Ncube on Friday announced that the country will now measure the “blended” inflation rate.
Biti said the government always comes up with “ridiculous” policies in a bid to cover its “embarrassing failures”. Said Biti:
The Reserve Bank has this incredible but ridiculous capacity of inventing dross and reselling the same.
Zimbabweans remember the fiction of the 1:1 parity exchange between the Zim $ & the US$.
Operation “gedye gedye” was an embarrassing failure whose sole motive was to cover up billions ..stolen from depositors.
The new fad on the scene is the creature called “ blended inflation “ meant to refer to inflation calculated on a blend of the US$ & the RTGS$.
Inflation is the measure of the price movement of a good over a period of time. Any good has one price so the blend rate is pure undiluted heresy and is a disingenuous attempt to muddle the ever-rising rate of inflation.
Yet another example of incompetence & mendacity of the Central Bank. One trapped in a huge Hypocrisy Trap. Zim inflation remains the highest in the world & no amount of spin can change that.
Using the blended rate, the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZIMSTAT) said the year-on-year inflation for February 2023 was 92.3% from 101.5% in January.
Previously the rate of inflation was based only on items in Zimbabwean dollars.
Before Friday’s move to measure the blended inflation rate, ZIMSTAT had measured annual inflation at 229.8% in January and 243.8% in December.
More: Pindula News