A man shows a wad of the new Zimbabwe two-dollar notes he received from a bank in Harare on November 12, 2019. Jekesai NJIKIZANA / AFPZimbabwe’s central bank has raised its benchmark interest rate to 80 percent in a bid to rein in inflation worsened by the war in Ukraine, it announced on Monday.
It marks a jump from the previous 60 percent set in October and is the world’s highest, after Venezuela and Argentina, according to various statistical sources. According to Bloomberg, the rate is the country’s highest since September 2019 when the bank set it at 70 percent.Inflation in the economically-turbulent country in March ticked upward to 72.7 percent from 66.1 percent the previous month.
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe said it had “noted that global inflation was on the increase as a consequence of the on-going Russia-Ukraine conflict which had secondary pass-through effects on domestic and international prices”. It said global rising prices of oil, gas and fertilisers had “inevitably had a negative impact on domestic costs of production and was destabilising the foreign exchange market”.
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