Zimbabwe's economic collapse is likely to accelerate with inflation topping 5,000 percent by year-end as President Robert Mugabe's government loses control of a crisis already rippling across Africa, a senior IMF official said on Sunday.
International Monetary Fund Africa Director Abdoulaye Bio-Tchane said Zimbabwe's government had shown little sign of coming to grips with its mounting economic problems, promising more hardships amid sharply rising political tensions. "It depends on how much the people in the country can take," Bio-Tchane told Reuters in an interview. "The question is how far it could fall.
The last four years we've seen GDP falling by more than 35 percent. Inflation is running at more than 1,700 percent and our estimate is by the year's end it could move even beyond 5,000 percent."
Bio-Tchane's forecast came as Mugabe's government comes under rising international condemnation over a violent crackdown on the opposition this week. In response, the United States and other nations threatened to tighten sanctions against Mugabe and other senior Zimbabwean officials.
Mugabe, 83, has warned against any "monkey games" by those he called the stooges of his Western critics and said police would now be well armed to deal with violence caused by the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
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