HARARE – The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) will introduce a new 100 billion dollar note on Monday barely two months after it introduced 50 and 25 billion dollar notes as inflation ravages the once prosperous southern African nation.

The new note will however not be able to buy a loaf of bread which costs around 120 billion dollars.

Under the central the bank's regulations, people are only able to withdraw 100 billion dollars a day, which is too little in a country where an average family is said to require nearly Z$14 trillion for basic goods and services per month.

The RBZ introduced new 10 million, 50 million 100 million and 250 million dollar notes during the first quarter of this year.

However the notes are now worthless after annual inflation soared to 2.2 million percent as Zimbabwe reels under an economic crisis that President Robert Mugabe blames on sanctions imposed by Western countries in a bid to end his iron grip on power.

But critics blame the economic meltdown repression and wrong polices by Mugabe such as his haphazard fast-track land reform exercise that displaced established white commercial farmers and replaced them with either incompetent or inadequately funded black farmers.

The economic crisis that the World Bank says is the worst for a country outside a war zone is also dramatised by shortages of food, foreign currency and unemployment above 80 percent. – ZimOnline