Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe’s long rule seems to have come to an end after the southern African country’s army staged a coup. The 93-year-old leader had driven the nation to utter ruin with inflation once hitting a high of 500 billion per cent
Trillion dollar notes
The country’s hyperinflation in the previous decade was considered by the International Monetary Fund as the worst for any country not at war. The 100 trillion dollar Zimbabwean note was the highest-value currency to be printed by any central bank, according to Reuters
‘Money rubber bands’
In 2003, the inflation in the African nation was expected to surpass 800 per cent. At that time, the country’s highest currency denomination $Z1000 could not even buy a loaf of bread, according to a piece in The Atlantic written then. “Newspapers advertise ‘money rubber bands’ and electronic money counters that ‘count 1,500 bills per minute’.”
But a professor of Applied Economics at The Johns Hopkins University said the annual inflation rate in Zimbabwe was higher than 500 billion per cent. Steve H Hanke wrote in HuffPost that in November 2008, Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation recorded a “whopping 89.7 sextillion percent—the second highest in history … This is 179 billion times greater than the IMF’s figure.”
Post-WWII Hungary has recorded the highest-ever inflation
Is Venezuela next? Coffee says yes
And now, Venezuela is facing hyperinflation. People are forced to shell out more and more bills which are already in short supply. The price of a cup of coffee served at the country’s capital has
jumped to 8,000 bolivars from 1,100 over the past 12 months—an increase of 627 per cent—according to a tracker developed by Bloomberg