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Too few goods in Harare’s shops to gauge inflation;

Zimbabwe’s latest inflation figures had been delayed because there were not enough goods in the shops to measure price increases, the state statistical department said yesterday.

There was an “unavailability of required information such as prices of goods, due to their shortage on the formal market”, the state-controlled Herald daily newspaper quoted Moffat Nyoni, director of the Central Statistical Office (CSO), as saying.

“There are too many data gaps,” said Nyoni. “We went to too many shops to observe and so compilations have not been completed.” Some of the items in the office’s basket of goods used to measure inflation “were not available”, he said.

The CSO was “trying to find ways of coming up with the missing figures”.