Zimbabwe devalued its official exchange rate and offered tax relief to workers last night in President Robert Mugabe's latest bid to tackle the nation's economic crisis.
Finance Minister Samuel Mumbengengwi
But the steps, presented in a mid-year budget, offered no concrete measures to ease the world's highest inflation rate and the chronic food, fuel and foreign currency shortages, analysts said.
Presenting a mid-year supplementary budget, Finance Minister Samuel Mumbengegwi admitted Zimbabwe's economy was in deep crisis but blamed sanctions from Western countries for preventing it from accessing external funding.
Mr Mumbengegwi scrapped a two-tier foreign exchange system for government and exporters, devaluing both rates for the Zimbabwe dollar to 30,000 against the greenback.
Zimbabwe had applied an exchange rate of 250 to the US currency for government transactions and had allowed exporters and foreign currency account holders to exchange at a rate of 15,000 prior to the move.
The new rate still falls short of a widely used black market rate of about 250,000 to the US dollar.
Mr Mugabe has tightened his grip on power ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections expected next year, but analysts say mounting pressure from the economic meltdown could be the biggest threat to his rule.
Government price freezes have left store shelves empty as discontent spreads.