Zimbabwe ? Zimbabwe’s annual inflation rate surged to an unprecedented 3,714 percent at the end of April, the official state newspaper reported Thursday, as the government set up a commission to try to bring prices down to single-digit levels.

Prices more than doubled last month as shown by a 100.7 percent increase – the highest on record – in the consumer price index calculated by the state Central Statistical Office, the Herald newspaper said. In the past year they increased 36-fold.

The Herald said that President Robert Mugabe on Monday signed into law regulations to enforce wage and price controls through “comprehensive price surveys and inspections,” with a penalty of up to five years in jail for violators. The aim is to bring inflation into single digits.

Many consumer items have disappeared altogether, forcing supermarkets to fill out their shelves with empty packaging behind the few goods on display.

The worst economic crisis since independence in 1980 is blamed on corruption, mismanagement and the often-violent seizures of thousands of white-owned commercial farms since 2000 that disrupted the agriculture-based economy.

The international benchmark for hyperinflation is a 50 percent monthly increase.