HARARE (AFP) -- Zimbabwe has set up a task force to monitor prices of basic goods and probe shortages fuelling the country's runaway inflation, a cabinet minister said.

"The task force is being set up to monitor the prices (of goods) and their disappearance from the formal market," Industry and International Trade Minister Obert Mpofu told AFP. "It was approved by cabinet on Tuesday. We have realized that firms are hiking their prices almost everyday." "The task force was set up in line with the signing of the incomes and stabilization protocol." President Robert Mugabe last month signed the National Incomes and Pricing Commission Act as part of a clutch of measures aimed to rein back galloping price rises which is believed to have reached 4,500 percent. Mpofu said the task force will compel manufacturers to display selling prices for controlled goods. The creation of the task force came amid a spate of price increases over the past three weeks with a liter of petrol going up from 60,000 Zimbabwean dollars (240 U.S. dollars at the official rate but 41 U.S. cents at the black market) to 180,000 dollars and bus fares from the city center to the suburbs jumping more than 200 percent. Analysts however warned that the appointment of the task force to control prices will spawn a burgeoning parallel market of the monitored products