[How cool! The country is truly screwed. At what time do the blacks just run amuck into machine gun fire? That day may be coming. Jan]

Harare – Zimbabwe’s August inflation data has been delayed after statisticians failed to get funds to conduct price surveys in the southern African nation, which is battling economic crisis, official media said on Monday. The country’s annual inflation, which remains the world’s highest, eased slightly to 993.6 percent in July from June’s 1,184.6 percent, the second consecutive monthly slowdown. It is not known yet whether that trend continued in August. Moffat Nyoni, acting Central Statistical Office director, said the agency lacked the money to collect the data last month because of the disruption caused by the central bank’s phasing out of old bank notes for a new redenominated currency. “There was a point when funds could not be accessed as old (notes) were being phased out in the system while new bearer (notes) could not fill the void,” Nyoni told the Herald newspaper. “But we are hopeful that we will have the data soon, probably by the end of (this week),” he added. Nyoni would not comment further on Monday. Inflation data is usually released on the 10th of every month, or later if that day falls on a weekend. Zimbabwe is grappling with an eight-year-old recession widely blamed on President Robert Mugabe’s government and marked by chronic shortages of foreign currency, fuel and food, rising unemployment and grinding poverty. The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions says it plans national demonstrations on Wednesday to protest against poor wages and workers’ lack of access to anti-retroviral drugs to fight HIV/AIDS, which kills an estimated 3,000 Zimbabweans each week. Mugabe, who has ruled the country since independence from Britain in 1980, denies mismanaging the economy, accusing the West of engaging in economic sabotage to punish him for his seizures of white-owned commercial farms for blacks.

From Reuters, 11 September
Source: WWW.ZwNews.Com