Once Famed for Hyperinflation, Zimbabwe Suspends Inflation Data

(Bloomberg) -- Zimbabwe, suffering the world's second-highest inflation rate, won't publish price data for the next six months as unrest mounts over surging costs and shortages.

The Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency won't report year-on-year inflation figures until February 2020, Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube told lawmakers Thursday in the capital, Harare. That's to allow the body to collect comparable data after the introduction of a new currency earlier this year.

Annual inflation in the southern African nation surged to 175.7% in June as shortages of food and fuel pushed up prices and the official exchange rate weakened to 9.2 per dollar from 2.5 per dollar since Feb. 25. Of 120 countries tracked by Bloomberg, only Venezuela has a higher inflation rate.

The government started distributing food to people in cities this week for the first time as a drought and an economic crisis caused widespread food shortages that may affect as many as 5.5 million people. Ncube said the economy will contract this year because of a lack of foreign exchange and energy.

The statistics agency will continue to publish month-on-month inflation data. That rate has also increased rapidly -- to 39.5% in June from 1.7% in February.

Zimbabwe is no stranger to runaway inflation and abandoning certain indicators. Price growth peaked at 500 billion percent in 2008, prompting the government to abandon the Zimbabwe dollar.

To contact the reporters on this story: Ray Ndlovu in Johannesburg at rndlovu1@bloomberg.net;Godfrey Marawanyika in Harare at gmarawanyika@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Benjamin Harvey at bharvey11@bloomberg.net, Rene Vollgraaff, Paul Richardson

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