From 400 To 1,200 Blows

Although the difference between the statistics and reality is not only obvious but also enormous, there is no serious reason to doubt the statistics' accuracy. To account for this one should take into consideration that statistics follows the prices of 400 products whose prices are maintained at a more or less ridiculously small level simply because they are nowhere to be found. Furthermore, the inflation is galloping even on a daily basis, so that it is a big difference whether the prices are recorded in the morning, at noon or in the evening. True, experts point out that the difference between the official and the real inflation, because of the already mentioned reasons, should not be more than 50 to 60 percent. If so, the July inflation rate would stand at between 650 and 700 per cent, but there are indications that it is two times higher than that. At issue here is, primarily, the growth of the hard currency exchange rates in July. Newspapers speculate about the value of the Deutsch Mark having increased by 30 times (from one to 30 million dinars) so that, judging by this, it is expected that a Deutsch Mark will cost as much as one billion dinars at the beginning of September. Such predictions are based on the conviction that the National Bank of Yugoslavia (NBY) will continue to print money at full steam so that a billion dinars for one mark at the beginning of September may turn out to be a naively low estimate. The waves of increases in the values of foreign currency exchange rates and goods keep alternating, and reach the same level only after some time has elapsed. In this sense, there was only one novelty in July: the statistics registered an unusually big discrepancy between the increases in the value of hard currencies and that of goods--the price of a DM went up three times more than the officially established inflation rate--which points to a real inflation of around 1,300 percent. Close to this level of the July inflation is also the increase in the minimum monthly salary by 11.5 times over one month, which is not surprising when one knows that this wage represents the sum of the retail prices of food and clothing determined for the unemployed while the sanctions are in effect. Therefore, this refers mostly to the goods that can more or less be found in stores and which people really do buy (as much as they can since the little money they get, and if they do at all, is paid to them as late as possible). In this whole confusion--if anyone cares whether the monthly inflation is 400, 500 or 1,500 per cent--it seems that the Serbian government knows precisely where it is and what it is doing, at least in the field of the so-called inflationary taxation of the population, together with an attempted robbery. The latter is pointed to by the new weekly price list for the purchase of wheat, published by the republican Office for stockpiles. The announced purchase prices for wheat from the 3rd to the 9th of August envisage a daily inflation of between the initial 5.12 to the final 5.40 percent. However, already in July, and also on the basis of the official monthly inflation of 341 per cent, the daily inflation amounted to 5.8 per cent. Therefore, had the present daily growth of the price of wheat been offered to farmers in July, even if the basic price hadn't been disputable, the state would have achieved a profit resulting from both the inflation and swindling.