If central banks in many countries are regaining their once lost autonomy to set targets for inflation and decide on interest rates, albeit the political temperature, as The Economist recently noted, that was never the case in Ethiopia.
 

The Ethiopian public is yet to hear a word from Teklewold Atnafu, governor of the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE), about whether he even thinks about monetary policy measures in order to curb the surging inflation in Ethiopia and whether or not his boss at Menelik Palace feels good about it.
 

Ironically, compare him with Gideon Gono, Zimbabwe's central bank governor, who reigns over one of the highest super-hyper-inflation rates the world has ever seen, 2,200pc. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), an expert on the subject, forecasted even further, claiming that Zimbabwe's inflation is heading up to 3,000pc by the end of the year. Mr Gono, however, made a monetary policy statement as recently as last week, reviewing his earlier targets to offset the raging inflation that is plaguing the Zimbabwe economy.
 

Although, remotely far from a collapsing economy in Zimbabwe, Ethiopia's inflation rate is no pleasant surprise either, particularly to the urban poor. Never mind that the authority over consumer price indexes (CPI), the Ethiopian Central Statistics Agency (CSA), has not updated its data on the official website, www.csa.gov.et, since January 2007.
 

There are economists who claim the latest CPI to reach as high as 19pc, not only the highest in the past 10 years, but also a rare occurrence following the main harvest in December where prices, particularly on food, should have gone down. What has made this nerve-raking to policymakers in this country and their development partners is that prices of grain are surging at a time when the government is claiming a record high growth in agricultural output of 23pc since 2004.
 

Thus, inflation and what causes it to behave the way it does in Ethiopia, is one of the major preoccupations of the government this day. Of course, figuring out how to deal with President Issayas Afeworki's Eritrea appears to be top on the list, according to gossip. Just follow the propaganda onslaught against him on the state media, which was not the case a few years ago.
 

The source of inflation continues to remain a bone of contention between the Ethiopian government, IMF and several of the development partners who are at a loss what to do next. Some claim production increases claimed by the government may not be as high as 23pc; could it be possible that local agricultural officials reported inflated numbers only to meet targets imposed on them, they wonder?
 

It is also assumed that monetary expansion of the economy (65pc in the past four years) and a growing credit supply (over 200pc) as a result of public expenditure is the major reason for the IMF to prescribe a policy recommendation of a bitter pill sort to the government. It wants Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's administration to cut back its massive public sector investments and cool the economy off. He would not possibly accept this.

Nonetheless, with no role of the central bank in sight, the economic team of the Prime Minister has requested the United Nations Economic Commission to Africa (UNECA) conduct an independent survey to determine the source of inflation in Ethiopia, before deciding whether or not to buy the IMF's recommendations, claims gossip. If indeed that is true, it should be a morale boost for the Addis Abeba based UN agency to be trusted by a regime that is often suspicious of foreign involvement on its domestic turf, says gossip.