The government started distributing food to people in cities this week for the first time as a drought and an economic crisis caused widespread food shortages that may affect as many as 5.5 million people. Ncube said the economy will contract this year because of a lack of foreign exchange and energy.

The statistics agency will continue to publish month-on-month inflation data. That rate has also increased rapidly — to 39.5% in June from 1.7% in February.

Zimbabwe is no stranger to runaway inflation and abandoning certain indicators. Price growth peaked at 500 billion percent in 2008, prompting the government to abandon the Zimbabwe dollar.