The Central Bank on Friday announced it would introduce a new Z$500 million dollar note made of '100 percent cotton,' as the country battles world record inflation.

A published statutory instrument said the new note would be purple in colour and have the text 'RBZ' embedded on the front, and on the back have 'an impression of dairy cows being milked mechanically and a miner drilling underground.' The country has been crippled by shortages of bank notes which has fuelled long winding queues of desperate customers wanting to withdraw their money from banks.

After running down the country's economy Mugabe's regime does not have the money to buy the special paper used to print money and has now been forced to use cotton materials to print bank notes. It's not yet clear how money made from 'cotton' will look and no one has seen the samples, but some experts suggested it might be a hybrid of several other materials used to make the money 'as close to paper' as possible. The new Z$500 million bill is not expected to change anything as it's estimated to only cover the cost of buying 8 loaves of bread.

A Z$200 million dollar note is also expected, but no date has been given yet when both the Z$200 and Z$500 million denominations will be unveiled. Only last week the RBZ unveiled new $10 million, $50 million and $100 million notes, following a review of weekly cash withdrawal limits for individual account holders from $500 000 to $100 million, and $1 million to $50 million for companies.

With inflation officially at 231 million percent but unofficially over 500 quintillion percent, analysts say the new measures amount to a 'dog chasing its tail.' Under Gono's regime, 29 new bank notes have been introduced in 2008 alone in an effort to keep pace with inflation. But every time cash withdrawal limits are raised, with the consequent increase in the amount of money supplied, in most cases, prices of goods and services have also doubled, if not trebled.

This has meant none of the cash withdrawal limits has ever covered the daily basic cost of living for Zimbabweans. In the absence of fundamental political and economic reforms, the central bank remains treating the symptoms - and not the disease.