Month-on-month inflation rate in November eased marginally to 5.76 percent, shedding 0.64 percentage points on the October 2021 rate of 6.40 percent, latest figures from the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (Zimstat) show.
Despite the decrease, November inflation is the second highest monthly rate since January.
The month-on-month inflation rate is given by the percentage change in the index of the relevant month of the current year compared with the index of the previous month in the current year.
The month-on-month Food and Non Alcoholic Beverages inflation rate stood at 6.51 percent in November 2021, shedding 1.05 percentage points on the October 2021 rate of 7.56 percent.
At the same time, month-on-month non-food inflation rate stood at 5.21 percent, shedding 0.35 percentage points on the October 2021 rate of 5.56 percent.
The ease in inflation, despite being insignificant to the average consumer, has been necessitated by tight monitoring of money supply into the economy by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe which has somewhat managed to slow down the exchange rate movements that were spiraling in October.
The CPI for the month ending November 2021 stood at 3,760.86 compared to 3,555.90 in October 2021 and 2,374.24 in November 2020.
The year-on-year inflation rate (annual percentage change) for the month of November 2021 as measured by the all items Consumer Price Index (CPI) stood at 58.40 percent.
The mean month-on-month inflation rate for the period January to December 2020 was 13.8 percent while the mean month-on-month inflation rate for the same period in 2019 was 17.0 percent. The mean month-on-month inflation rate from January to November 2021 was 3.9 percent.
Food Poverty Line (FPL) for one person in November reached $ 5 424 while Total Consumption Poverty Line (TCPL) for one person now stands at $ 7 556 in November.
This comes at a time civil servants in the country are earning between $ 16 000 and $ 20 000 which is still far below the FPL for a family of five.
