Zimbabwe’s rate of inflation slipped to 3.5 percent in September, shedding 8.9 percentage points from 12.4 percent the previous month, the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (Zimstat) said Monday.
“This means that prices as measured by the all items CPI increased by an average rate of 3.5 percent from August 2022 to September 2022,” Zimstat said.
Month-on-month food and non-alcoholic beverages inflation rate stood at 1.7 percent in September, shedding 12.5 percentage points on the August rate of 14.2 percent, Zimstat said.
It added that the month-on-month non-food inflation rate stood at 5.2 percent, shedding 5.4 percentage points on the August 2022 rate of 10.6 percent.
The return to single-digit came five months after monthly inflation reached the double-digit figure of 15.5 percent in April this year, peaking at 30.7 percent in June before it started to decelerate following a raft of monetary and fiscal measures that have been implemented by the government to tame inflation.
The measures included hiking the bank policy rate from 80 percent to 200 percent per annum and introducing gold coins to mop up excess liquidity from the market.
According to Zimstat, year-on-year inflation for September slightly declined to 280.4 percent from 285 percent in August.
The fall in monthly inflation is within the Treasury’s forecast. Last week, Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube said he expected month-on-month inflation to fall to 3 percent and annual inflation to below 100 percent by year-end due to inflation containment measures that are being implemented by the government. Enditem
