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Despite government forecasts that Zimbabwe's inflation was on its way down, month-on-month inflation for October came out at 38.75%, more than double its September level of 17.72%, according to figures released Friday by Zimstats.
The southern African government has set a target for inflation to reach below 10% by year end.
Inflationary pressures in Zimbabwe are mainly driven by depreciating exchange rate of the local currency, further fuelled by adverse market expectations and increases in money supply.
Month-on-month inflation started the year at 10.8% in January 2019, slowed down to 1.7% in February, before picking up in March and April. In June 2019, it hit a peak of 39.3%, making October's outcome the second highest in 2019.
Due to high exposure of tradeable goods to exchange rate movements, food and non-alcoholic beverages were the major drivers of inflation.
The month-on-month food and non-alcoholic beverages inflation rate stood at 48.35% in October 2019, gaining 28.80 percentage points on the September 2019 rate of 19.55%.
The month-on-month non-food inflation rate stood at 32.90%, gaining 16.27 percentage points on the September 2019 rate of 16.63%.
Zimbabwe previously outlawed the publication of annual inflation figures, but the consumer price index provided by Zimstats makes it possible to calculate inflation.
For October, annual inflation stood at 440.2%, up from 353% in September.
