People jostle for basic commodities at a Harare wholesale

"We have people who can supply us with anything we want, provided we can pay for the goods up-front," Chaumba told the Financial Gazette at the weekend as he struggled to carry half a tonne of flour to his small tuckshop.

The flour, packed in 10 cartons of 10 five kilogramme packets each, cost him about $100 000. He would resell each of the 100 packs of five kilogrammes for $2 000, he said, making a profit of $100 000.

Chaumba would not reveal the identities of his suppliers.

But the police tasked with enforcing the government-imposed price controls that have contributed to commodity shortages fear operators like Chaumba are only middlemen for established businesses trying to dodge the controls.

Manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers have suffered heavy losses since the price controls were introduced in October 2001, forcing some producers to resort to re-branding and re-packaging their products to evade the controls.

But analysts this week said since the government had moved in to plug that loophole, it was possible that some producers, wholesalers and retailers were now attempting to recoup their losses by using the black market to sell their products at more economic prices.

The analysts pointed out that most of the middlemen, many of them otherwise unemployed, did not have the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to buy the large quantities of goods they were selling on the black market and could merely be receiving goods from established operators.

Police spokesman Andrew Phiri said: "We believe that there are big guys behind this at every stage.

"At times the calibre of people we arrest with certain goods are not the kind of people who can at all afford them. You can see that they are working for some very big guys but even if we arrest them, they will not say where the goods are coming from."

Black market operators who are nabbed by the police are only required to pay a fine of $5 000, a mere pittance, analysts say, given the high prices at which they are selling basic commodities.

A visit to the Harare high-density suburb of Mbare, the nerve centre of the capital city’s black market, showed that a five-kg packet of mealie meal was selling at $1 500, compared to the government-stipulated price of $250.

A two litre bottle of cooking oil was being sold for $4 500, more than twice the controlled price of $1 200, while 50 kgs of maize, which should sell at $700, was retailing for up to $15 000.

The prices vary daily, operators at Mbare said, depending on product availability on the official market.

The Financial Gazette found that not only were the basic commodities that have mostly disappeared from supermarket shelves abundant on the Mbare black market, but some were being blatantly delivered by wholesalers.

During the reporters’ visit to the market, for instance, a delivery vehicle from a Harare wholesaler offloaded cooking oil and mealie meal to some vendors, who said they had close links with some Asian businessmen in the capital city.

They said the businessmen even employed people to sell their goods for them on the thriving black market.

"We get sugar, mealie meal, cooking oil and flour from some Asian wholesalers whom we do business with," said a vendor who declined to be named.

"Some of them actually phone us when ever they get consignments," he added.

But Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) president Anthony Mandiwanza this week said it was unlikely that manufacturers were involved in feeding the black market, which has significantly increased the cost of living for already struggling consumers.

"I can not speak for individual companies, but I don’t think there are any suppliers who are doing that," he told the Financial Gazette.

The CZI president attributed the growth of the black market to speculators who were cashing in on the uncertainty caused by the commodity shortages, which are also blamed on the government’s seizure of white-owned commercial farms for resettlement.

The so-called fast-track land reform programme and the drought that affected southern Africa last year have slashed food production by over 60 percent, leaving more than seven million people in need of emergency food aid.

Mandiwanza said: "Because of the uncertainty as a result of supply constraints, consumers are buying things in bulk and this creates artificial demand which is then exploited by speculators.

"There are permanent queues at most supermarkets in town. Some of these people are buying the goods not for their consumption, but for speculative purposes.

"Some of these people are exporting large quantities of these goods to neighbouring countries and this is worsening the shortages, which in turn worsens this problem (of the black market)."

The smugglers, who sell their goods for hard cash in neighbouring countries, have also contributed to escalating inflation in Zimbabwe by feeding the parallel market for foreign currency, where rates are more than 20 times the fixed exchange rate of $55 to US$1.

The country’s consumer rights watchdog, the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe (CCZ) said the only way to protect consumers from profiteering on the black market was for the government to allow producers economic prices.

CCZ spokeswoman Theresa Mutondohori said this would encourage those businesses that were feeding the black market to operate within established channels for the benefit of their customers.

She told the Financial Gazette: "We have not yet carried out detailed research to establish the loopholes leading to basic goods being delivered to the black market. However, the practicality of prices needs to be really looked into."