Minister for Finance and Economic Development, Mthuli Ncube says that he will not quarrel with global economist Steve Hanke over the latter’s assertion that Zimbabwe’s inflation was much higher than the official figures presented by authorities.
Hanke puts the country’s inflation are at 290 per cent, while the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency recently put it at 57 per cent.
While addressing guests at a Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe monetary policy review breakfast meeting on Friday, Ncube said:
Coming to issues being raised by Hanke, one has to know that there are many ways to calculate inflation.
In Zimbabwe, we have a very constant way of using the household basket to calculate inflation and that basket. Our inflation rate year on year is what it is as published.
Hanke is using something else like the replacement cost approach to calculate inflation which is why he is coming up with much higher figures.
He must not spend time quarrelling with us. We hear him, we know it. Figures are what they are and there is no need to fight because figures are what they are because of different methods to calculate inflation.
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