That it surely is, but in industrial countries way below what India is wrestling with. Britain’s inflation rate in May is said to be its highest in 16 years at 3.3 per cent, a full one per cent higher than the targeted 2 per cent. The next three months, it is feared, will see it rising to 4 per cent.

Year-on-year, the US inflation rate in May was 4.2 per cent, which was a 50 per cent increase from the overall rise of 2.8 per cent in 2007. However, on the food front, the US is reportedly facing the worst food inflation in 17 years. According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the US food prices rose 4 per cent in 2007, compared with an average 2.5 per cent annual rise for the last 15 years. It is learnt from the same source that eggs cost 25 per cent more in February than they did a year ago, bread 14 per cent, milk and other dairy products jumped 13 per cent, chicken and other poultry nearly 7 per cent. The US is facing the bleak prospect of food inflation being worse in 2008, with a rise of as much as 4.5 per cent.

Media reports say that nearly seven in 10 Americans are worried about maintaining their standard of living, three in 10 Americans polled said they were having trouble paying other household bills because of rising prices, more than half were struggling with high food costs, two in 10 with the price of electricity, 15 per cent each with medical costs and other household expenses, and 11 per cent with their housing costs.

As is only to be expected from a country dominated by automobiles, rising petrol prices were behind the acute financial hardship felt by two-thirds of those surveyed.

The interesting facet is that despite the pinch, and unlike India, there was no strident demand from the average run of the US population to do away with the federal petrol tax (at 20 per cent or 18 cents per gallon costing close to four dollars) to reduce the price.

Two-thirds of the Americans would rather let the earnings from tax continue to be ploughed into development projects than deprive them of funds by cutting the tax.

Here are the inflation rates for a few other countries in the grip of steeply rising prices: Afghanistan (17 per cent); Congo (18.2 per cent); Myanmar (20 per cent); Pakistan (11 per cent historic high); Serbia (15.5 per cent); Sri Lanka (26.2 historic high) Uzbekistan (19.8 per cent).

But there is no country that can come anywhere near Zimbabwe now or in the future. Prices are doubling there every three or four months.

The government itself admits the annual inflation to be a mind-boggling 165,000 per cent in February, with the result 50 million Zimbabwean dollars are equal to just one US dollar.

The government is said to have given up any thought of updating the gigantic figure, in the absence of any goods on which the calculation of new figures could be based!

It would seem from descriptions of the harrowing conditions circulating in cyberspace that a sandwich costs Zimbabwean $50 million and 1 kg of potatoes Z$17 million.

The only comparable situation was that of Germany in 1923 where prices quadrupled every month, and push carts were needed to carry currency notes to the shops in huge heaps!

(Inflation is based on consumer prices everywhere, except India which uses wholesale prices.)

B. S. RAGHAVAN

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