Food shortages and the threat of starvation for the less privileged members of the community have forced many people to redirect their meagre resources towards food purchases rather than clothing but Edgars Stores still managed to post a 254 percent net profit increase in the six months to 6 July.
The company says its sales were up 173 percent from $1.4 billion to $3.9 billion.
Sales for Edgars chain grew by 171 percent, those for Express by 178 percent and those for the manufacturing arm, Carousel, by 222 percent.
Carousel’s trading profit increased by a staggering 696 percent while that for Edgars went up by 304 percent and that for Express by 336 percent.
The company says the increased sales were largely due to meaningful wage and salary increases as well as informal flows of money from the large numbers of Zimbabweans now working out of the country.
This, it says, has resulted in “an artificial, shallow inflation-induced buoyancy in the market”, but it quickly adds that this is not sustainable in the medium to long term.
Its net profit was above the level of inflation for the clothing and footwear sector which stood at 164 percent.
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