The country’s Central Statistical Office said the year-on-year inflation rate in April was 1,042.9 per cent, up 129.3 percentage points from March, driving up the cost of essential purchases, like food.
"This means that on average goods and services normally purchased by households for final use in Zimbabwe were about 11 times as expensive in April 2006 as they had been 12 months before," Moffat Nyoni, the CSO's acting director, told a news conference.
"A bundle of goods and services that cost 100,000 Zimbabwean dollars in April 2005 would on average cost 1,142,900 dollars in April 2006," Mr Nyoni added.
The Consumer Council of Zimbabwe (CCZ) says a family of six needs at least 41 million Zimbabwean dollars ($A533) per month.
The sharpest increases were recorded in postal services, which went up 5,180.4 per cent, while hairdressing costs rose 4,454.3 per cent and rents soared by 3,787.8 per cent, the statistics office said.
"On a month-on-month basis the items that recorded the highest increases in prices were transport by 190 per cent, postal services by 67.1 per cent and other recreational items by 66.5 per cent," it said.
The country’s economy is considered to be shrinking faster than that of any other country in the world not at war.
Recovery unlikely
Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, Gideon Gono, forecast in January that inflation, referred to as "enemy number one" in government circles, would peak at over 800 per cent in March before receding to below 500 per cent in June and declining to double digits next year.
Economists however sketched a gloomier picture, saying a major recovery soon was unlikely, "We need help from the outside… Maybe not International Monetary Funds packages, but we need help," said Joseph Mzulu, an economist at the Zimbabwe Financial Holdings.
Mr Mzulu said that soaring inflation was to be expected as the central bank resorted to printing money to meet country's urgent needs.
Fellow independent economic analyst Daniel Ndhlela agrees the situation is dire, “Things are simply out of hand and we have come to a situation where we as consumers and industry can't make ends meet any more."
"The normal economy has simply collapsed. There is no country that can ever get to the level that we are at," he told AFP.
Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of Africa, is in the throes of an economic crisis, characterised by hyperinflation, soaring poverty levels and unemployment, and chronic shortages of fuel and basic goods.
UN aid agencies estimate that more than 4 million people, in the population of 13 million, which are in need of food aid in Zimbabwe. President Robert Mugabe’s government tends to blame factors beyond its control, including drought and the hostility of Western governments.