Zimbabwe sets profit margins for businesses

GOVERNMENT has set profit margins for businesses

• Zimbabwe shuts down private abattoirs

• Business leaders strike conciliatory trone

• 1300 business executives nabbed in price blitz

• Mugabe warns company seizures threats 'no joke'

• Mugabe supporters back price freeze

• Gono clashes with Zanu PF officials over price blitz

• Zimbabwe bans bulk sales as shelves empty

• Mobile phone firms hit in price war

• Stampedes as Zim gripped by panic buying

• Zimbabwe store shelves empty

• Msika warns of Mugabe's wrath over prices

• Manager beaten up, senator arrested in price war

• Mpofu imposes price freeze on all goods

• Chaos in Zimbabwe price stand-off

• Biti: Indigenisation Bill another platform to loot

• Government order on prices ignored

• Zimbabwe orders prices to be slashed by half

• Tax-free threshold raised to $1,5 million

• Mutambara: An economic vision for Zimbabwe

• Zimbabwe's currency crashes

By Cris Chinaka

ZIMBABWE has imposed tight profit margins for businesses, stepping up a price rollback programme that has led to empty store shelves, long petrol queues and renewed fears of a total economic collapse.

President Robert Mugabe ordered that prices for a wide range of foodstuffs and consumer items be slashed two weeks ago, accusing businesses of raising prices as part of an effort by Western opponents to overthrow his 27-year-old government.

On Wednesday state radio reported a government taskforce overseeing the anti-inflation price scheme had set the price mark-up from producers to wholesalers at 5 percent and at 10 percent for prices from wholesalers to retailers.

Industry and Trade Minister Obert Mpofu, who chairs the taskforce, also has revoked permits of private slaughterhouses and transferred all the country's meat processing business to the larger state-owned Cold Storage Company (CSC), it said.

Mpofu moved against the abattoirs -- which handle about 40 percent of the southern African country's meat business -- because they had stopped meat supplies.

"In view of this, the government has thus, with immediate effect, revoked the licences of all private abattoirs," he was quoted as saying by state radio.

The new measures came as the government increased police patrols to enforce the price controls, which analysts say may provide temporary relief to a long-suffering population but is bound to worsen Zimbabwe's economy.

Zimbabwe is struggling with chronic shortages of food and fuel and inflation of 4,500 percent. Last month the government ordered businesses to roll back prices on bread, beef, mealie-meal, milk, oil, and salt, sugar and other basic commodities in an effort to stem inflation.

The forced price cuts, however, have sparked a wave of panic buying around the country, leaving many urban shops empty of basic goods that were already in short supply as a result of the country's eight-year recession.

Long petrol queues have resurfaced in the capital Harare, and hordes of shoppers sometimes lay siege outside supermarkets in the hope of new deliveries of sugar, cooking oil and bread -- the most desired products.

A Reuters correspondent saw dozens of shoppers jostling outside a shop in the city centre after rumours that a bread delivery van was on its way.

"I have to buy because I didn't get any yesterday," one man said. "And now when I have any money I am in the habit of buying anything that I think I need because there is no guarantee that these things will be available in the future," he added.

Zimbabwe's central bank has increased the daily cash withdrawals that individuals and companies can make from Z$1.5 million to up to Z$20 million to help people cope with the rocketing inflation.

Private economists say the actual figure is probably double the reported government rate of 4,500 percent for May.

Critics accuse Mugabe, who has been in power since independence from Britain in 1980, of mismanaging what was once one of Africa's most prosperous economies and suppressing political dissent.

The 83-year-old Zimbabwean leader denies he has run the economy into the ground, blaming the problems instead on what he calls sabotage by Western opponents who are punishing him for seizing and redistributing white-owned farms to blacks. - Reuters

COMMODITY RETAIL PRICES SET BY GOVERNMENT

Standard Bread Loaf ($22,000)

Self Raising Flour 2kg ($14,000)

Roller Meal 5kg ($21,875)

10kg ($41,562)

20kg ($78,967)

50kg ($191,598)

Cement masonry 50kg ($150,000)

Cement PCI5 50kg ($170,000)

Refined Meal 5kg ($25,877)

10kg ($49,216)

20kg ($93,507)

50kg ($226,882)

Cooking Oil 750ml ($22,000)

1litre ($43,000)

2litres ($86,000)

5litres ($190,000)

Salt (Fine) 500g ($20,000)

1kg ($43,000)

2kg ($80,000)

5kg ($200,000)

Salt (Coarse) 500g ($18,000)

1kg ($34,000)

2kg ($66,000)

5kg ($195,000)

White Sugar 1kg ($17,141)

2kg ($33,940)

10kg ($168,002)

50kg ($833,292)

Brown Sugar 1kg ($15,881)

2kg ($31,445)

10kg ($155,652)

50kg ($772,035)

Yeast 125g ($20,000)

Steri Milk 500ml ($32,970)

Lacto 500ml ($28,850)

Chimombe 500ml ($31,940)

Fresh 500ml ($28,180)

Beef(Economy) 1kg ($90,000)

Beef(Commercial) 1kg ($105,000)

Bath soap 250g ($50,000)

Mazoe orange Crush 1L ($65,000)

Mazoe Orange Crush 2L ($120,000)

Other Cordial Juices 2L ($85,000)

Rice 2kg ($220,000)

Baby cereal 500g ($97,200)

Cerevita 500g ($100,000)

Toothpaste 100ml ($96,200)

Toilet rolls 4s ($85,000)

Sanitary Pads 10s ($80,000)

Camphor Cream 500g ($200,000)

* Producer to wholesaler mark-up = 5%

* Wholesaler to retailer mark-up = 10%

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