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Zimbabwe government agree on bread price with bakers
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The Zimbabwe government has offered the country’s bakers a temporary reprieve by increasing the retail price of bread to $295 from $200.
Bread had disappeared from supermarket shelves after bakers stopped making it, saying the $200-a-loaf price tag was not viable for them. Moreover, they said that they were forced to import flour as there was not enough wheat in the country.
However, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has released US$10 million for the importation
of wheat to avert a serious bread shortage, but the industry said it would take many weeks before the wheat arrives in the country.
Zimbabwe's annual wheat requirements are pegged at 400 000 tonnes, and the National Bakers' Association (NBA) chairman, Burombo Mudumo, said that the new price would help bakers break even.
The actual price of bread will be finalised by the recently announced interim Administrative Price Stabilisation Mechanism Committee (APSM). But in a recent press statement, the NBA said that the industry needed a retail price structure of $385 to keep pace with working capital cost increases due to inflation.
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