HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - Yearly inflation soared to an all-time high of 782 percent in Zimbabwe, the former breadbasket of southern Africa whose economy collapsed from years of Prices rose 27.5 percent during the month of February alone, and the average family of five needed about $90 just to meet basic food needs, far above average earnings, state radio said Saturday. Trade unions say those still formally employed - about 20 percent of the work force - earn about $55 a month. Workers on formerly white-owned commercial farms, by contrast, earn as little as $3 a month from their employers, many of them beneficiaries of President Robert Mugabe's "fast track" land redistribution.
In 2001, $1 was equal to 55 Zimbabwean dollars. In 2003, $1 equaled 700 Zimbabwean dollars, and in 2005 $1 equaled 15,000. Today, $1 is equal to 99,000 Zimbabwean dollars.
The nation is suffering its worst economic crisis since independence from Britain in 1980 - when $1 equaled two Zimbabwean dollars - with acute shortages of food, gasoline, medicines and other essential imports. The U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe said in November that gross government mismanagement and corruption have reversed a half-century of progress in six years.
| And Bob hasn't missed a meal. |
State radio predicted that inflation would fall to 200 percent annually by the end of the year after a "bumper harvest by new farmers," but an all-party parliamentary committee warned before the November start of this season's rains that production would be at an all-time low due to shortages of diesel, seed, fertilizer, chemicals, functioning farm machinery and skilled labor. Farmworkers of Malawian, Zambian or Mozambican descent have been forced to return to their parents' and grandparents' countries of origin following eviction by Mugabe's land recipients.