Crouching bureaucrat, hidden elephant

Inflation’s emerging phenomenon

WHAT do you do when you’re living in some tiny mud-and-pole hut, and you’re trying to hide a bull elephant?
Maybe the Zimbabwe government has the answer. They tried it recently, but their elephant – April’s shock inflation data – still came charging out, a bunch of government securocrats and state media spin types frantically trying to pull it back by the tail.
Journalists from no less than two private newspapers and at least two international news agencies working in Harare contacted the Central Statistical Office (CSO), hoping to get the April inflation figures.
By then, the data had already been delayed by a week. All the journalists – plus a good number of private economists we have asked – were, as late as 1700hrs that Wednesday, fed the line: “Maybe tomorrow”.
So the rumour that inflation had indeed breached 3000 percent, and that it was in fact peeking at 4000 percent, remained just that, a rumour. Until the next day.
On the Thursday, many looked past The Herald’s front page screamer: “President Mugabe approves Incomes Act”.
But, there were some readers who gritted their teeth and waded through the story – plodding through 23 paragraphs and four full broadsheet columns – only to stumble upon this absolute gobsmacker: “The much awaited (incomes) body comes as it emerged (author’s emphasis) yesterday that the consumer price index rose 100.7 percent in April, meaning prices more than doubled last month, and this followed a 50.5 percent increase in March.”
Then to paragraph number 25.
“The corresponding annual inflation rate at the end of April,” we are casually told, “rose to 3713.9 percent.”
By all accounts, this is the first time in our country’s glorious history that inflation data is said to have “emerged”. Until last week, inflation figures were said to have been “released”, sometimes “showed”, or even “reported”, by the CSO.
So, disappointed that the CSO had given us their “maybe tomorrow” only to see the figures “emerge” the next day – under a pile of, it must be said, uninspiring news of a law against inflation, we went about this week trying to find out why the rules have changed such that inflation numbers should only now “emerge”, and not be “released”.
First, we contacted Sylvester Nguni, Economic Development Minister. His ministry recently took over the CSO from Finance. He swore he had been told by CSO that the figures had been released to “the press” much earlier than the Wednesday.
But then there were other officials in the same ministry who swear they had seen the CSO printout as early as the previous Thursday – May 11. But, apparently, somebody has instructed that all CSO data should no longer come directly from CSO, but through Information and Publicity.
So, these government conspiracy theorists swear, it was agreed that the gory data be kept in a bottle until the President signed the Incomes and Pricing Commission Act – a law setting up a pricing police.
So in the end, it is claimed, it was not from the CSO that the inflation numbers “emerged”, it was out of a labyrinth of red tape – each deskbound bureaucrat taking their turn to slap a pudgy stamp over the numbers – until they truly did “emerge” at The Herald.
Implausible theory? Perhaps, but hands up if you ever seen inflation figures “emerging”, even in Borat’s sick vision of Kazakhstan, or Gerbunguly Berdimuhammedow’s Turkmenistan, where presidents are elected on 98 percent vote majorities.
Must we now prepare to see inflation figures going the way of other bits of economic statistics that government has, over the years, quietly stopped supplying the market? Hands up if you know Zimbabwe’s real jobless rate, or if you’ve never had to work out the real budget deficit on your own, or if you’ve ever seen the current account.
There is a scary trend “emerging” here. Last month, March data was canned for two weeks until central bank boss Gideon Gono let it out in Bulawayo. This time, April inflation only “emerged” as background to a story on a new law.
What’s next? An official declaration banning the release of a number that government, quite clearly, no longer wants anybody to see?
What is it our ancestors said about “that which has horns” not being possible to wrap? And at 3714 percent, these are not horns. They are ten-foot tusks.