In June the statistic stood at 11.2 million per cent a year, but the state-owned Herald newspaper said that in July it was more than 20 times higher. Monthly inflation was 2,600.2 per cent, it added.
A loaf of bread, which cost Z$500 at the beginning of August, now costs between Z$7,000 and Z$10,000, even when it can be found.
The root cause of the country's hyperinflation is the government's policy of printing ever more money to meet its own needs, which has the effect of destroying the Zimbabwe dollar's value in terms of hard currency, sending the cost of anything imported soaring.
And with the economy in a downward spiral Officially, one US dollar is worth Z$180. But on the black market, it fetches Z$8,000 – and that is for cash, which is in desperately short supply. For bank transfers, the rate is Z$1.5million to one.
These figures are even after the currency was revalued in August, when 10 zeros were knocked off.
"The consequences of such a rate of inflation is absolute desperation, despair and poverty," said Eldred Masunungure, professor of political science lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe.
The deadlock between Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change over forming a new government was not helping, he added: "What is baffling is that the political players seem to take a cavalier attitude over the political crisis whose resolution is tied to the economic turnaround." But according to independent analysts, even the 231 million per cent statistic is a woeful underestimate.
Steve Hanke, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, and an expert in exchange rates and inflation, has developed the Hanke Hyperinflation Index for Zimbabwe (HHIZ).
Given the non-existence of government statistics for the money supply and the unreliability of its inflation statistics, it uses market- based price data instead to calculate the figure. As of this week, the HHIZ showed inflation in Zimbabwe was 2 trillion per cent a year.
Even so, it still has some way to go before approaching the world's worst hyperinflation ever, in post-war Hungary, where it reached 4.19 quintillion per cent.
The Herald is a government mouthpiece which normally parrots the official line but occasionally displays a more subversive attitude, and yesterday's article was a case in point.
"The latest inflation figures show that Zimbabwe is suffering the highest inflation rate in the world," it admitted openly.
"While several measures have been put in place to calm inflation, most were ill-fated."
Following the standard formula, it stated: "The Government blames this on illegal sanctions imposed by Britain and its allies."
But it went on: "Zimbabwe is suffering from foreign currency, fuel and food shortages. Prices of goods and services are rising on daily basis.
"The economy has contracted almost 50 per cent over the past 10 years on pathetic performance by all sectors. This was coupled by corruption in both the public and private sectors.
"Economists are hoping the economy could recover on the formation of an inclusive Government." The implicit criticism is indicative of differences over economic policy, and possibly more, within the Zanu-PF machine.
Rising food prices were the main driver of inflation, it said, and the World Food Programme yesterday appealed for more funding for its aid programme in Zimbabwe.
More than five million people, almost half the population, will need help at the peak of the hunger season in January, it said.
"The situation is already critical in many rural areas. A large number of farmers harvested little – if anything – this year and have now exhausted their meagre stocks.
"Many hungry families are reportedly living on one meal a day, exchanging precious livestock for buckets of maize or eating wild foods such as baobab and amarula."
The two biggest donors to its programme are America and Britain, the countries most often singled out for criticism by Mr Mugabe.
Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC leader, said yesterday that the allocation of ministries was comprehensively deadlocked, denying claims that only two bodies had yet to be settled, and called for the intervention of the mediator, the former South African president Thabo Mbeki.