Humble bicycle propels Zimbabwe inflation

Humble bicycle propels Zimbabwe inflation

• Zim dollar plunges 66% on interbank market

• Zimbabwe to have new currency next year

• Gono unveils new economic reforms

• Gono says Zim in 'darkest hour before dawn'

• Zimbabwe's inflation shoots to 360 percent

• Zimbabwe: living in a lunatic asylum

• Zimbabwe dollar falls to all time low

• Zimbabwe crisis to worsen - analysts

• Inflation shoots up, again

• Murerwa wants end to price controls

• Zim inflation surges by 90 percent

• Murerwa slashes ministerial budgets

• Top businessman Naran dies

• SA approves US$1bn credit line for Zim

• RBZ devalues Zim dollar by 40 percent

• Zimbabwe faces economic meltdown

• Gono's economic plan crumbles as inflation shoots up

• Patrick Mlambo: A 100 reasons why Gono should resign

• Gono wants white farmers back

• Central back chief admits failure

• Gono revises inflation target 100 percent upwards

• Gono's 'sleepless nights' over inflation

• Gono fighting a losing battle

• Gono, the Zimbabwean Napoleon

• Patrick Mlambo: The small minds in charge of our economy

• Chido Makunike: Overcoming the 'Messiah Complex'

• Zimbabwe dollar depreciates by 4 percent

• Inflation accelerates once again

• Gono predicts inflation to fall to 20%

• Zim fools no-one with 9% unemployment claim

• Zim claims on lowered inflation unconvincing

• House prices bite Zimbabwe's poor

• Reserve Bannk cautions against paying ex-political prisoners

• $200bln windfall for ex-political prisoners

• Zimbabwe's inflation seen dipping to 160%

By MacDonald Dzirutwe

ZIMBABWE'S inflation has spiked higher on the back of the humble bicycle, according to government statisticians.

The price of a bike in October was almost twenty times what it was a year earlier, as Zimbabweans frustrated by chronic fuel shortages opted increasingly for pedal power.

The 1,838 percent inflation in the two-wheeler market pushed overall annual inflation last month to 411 percent, the Central Statistics Office said on Thursday.

The rise from 359.8 percent in September dashed any hope that the government would succeed in its aim of reducing inflation to 300 percent by year-end.

"We are selling more bicycles now than before ... Most people who come here do not complain about the prices, they believe it is a worthwhile investment," a Harare bicycle dealer told Reuters. "For us it is good business because demand is high."

Soaring costs for electricity and railway fares -- which both rose by more than 200 percent compared with September -- were also factors behind the rise in inflation, the CSO said.

Early this month prices of basic commodities were marked up by more than 100 percent, in an alarming trend which analysts attributed to the Zimbabwe dollar's slump after it was partly floated last month, and tumbled some 66 percent.

Analysts said this would compound the misery of the country's poor majority battling daily to eke out a living, and inflation could end the year above 450 percent.

"The inflation trend will be sustained until the end of the year and frankly the Reserve Bank targets will not be achieved. It will be much higher, not less than 450 percent," said James Jowa, a Harare-based economist.

Rampaging inflation is one of the most visible signs of an economy in its sixth year of recession marked by chronic shortages of foreign currency, fuel and food widely blamed on government mismanagement.

The fuel crisis has hit preparations for the 2005/6 agriculture season, halted public transport and forced some workers to walk to and from work.

Earlier this week police quashed a planned nationwide protest by the country's main labour federation against rising poverty in the southern African state, once the bread basket of the region but now a net food importer.

Zimbabwe workers have borne the brunt of the country's worst economic crisis, which critics blame on government policies, including the seizure of land from white commercial farmers to redistribute among blacks.

President Robert Mugabe's government has singled out inflation as the biggest scourge to the economy.

Mugabe rejects charges of misrule and instead says sanctions by Western nations opposed to the land seizures and drought have worsened the southern Africa country's economic problems - Reuters
JOIN THE DEBATE ON THIS ARTICLE ON THE NEWZIMBABWE.COM FORUMS
newsdesk@newzimbabwe.com