Zimbabweans sleep in queues outside banks as inflation is tipped to reach 75 per cent

 Sleeping in queues outside banks and swapping salaries for scarce US dollars is common in inflation-ravaged Zimbabwe, where the rate is tipped to reach 75 per cent this year 

HARARE – Chipo Takarasa, a 47-year-old Zimbabwean teacher painstakingly selects her groceries in a supermarket in the high density suburb of Mufakose in Harare.

As the UK battles its highest levels of inflation in 30 years, fluctuating high inflation in Zimbabwe has left workers struggling to make ends meet.

“It is difficult to shop when you do not have enough money. Everything has been going up in shops, it is painful to adjust to buy less groceries. But what can we do? Nothing,” said Ms Takarasa, a mother of three.

We had to cut the number of times we eat meat. We now buy affordable relish like kale and soya chunks,” Ms Takarasa said, showing food in her shopping basket she will use to make Zimbabwe’s staple meal – a thick maize porridge served with meat, fish or kale.

The Zimbabwean dollar has been ravaged by inflation in the past two years. When Ms Takarasa receives her monthly wage, she either rushes to shop to beat price increases or buys US dollars on the parallel market in an effort to preserve the value of her earnings.

“The US dollar is a more stable currency than the Zimbabwean dollar, everyone knows that. If you go to buy from the banks there are long queues,” she said.

The Zimbabwean government allows people to buy US dollars at an official rate of ZWL$126 per US dollar but the US dollar fetches about ZWL$230 on the black market.

Both the US dollar and local dollar are accepted as legal tender in Zimbabwe. It is common to see people sleeping in queues at banks to buy the scarce US dollars.

The country experienced hyper-inflation in 2008, causing shops to run out of food. For a decade from 2009 to 2019 the nation adopted the US dollar as currency, and inflation stabilised.

In July 2020, inflation peaked at 837 per cent before dropping to 50 per cent in mid-2021. It has since risen to 60.7 per cent in December according to the government’s statistics agency and is forecast to surge to 75 per cent in December, according to the country’s Reserve Bank.

Independent analysts say the inflation rate is more than that as most of the economy is informal. Unemployment in the country is 90 per cent and there is a dire lack of investment. A rise in global commodity prices, increase in energy bills and weakening of the local currency against the US dollarhave been recently cited as inflationary factors.