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Senior government officials in Zimbabwe leaked results yesterday for last month's presidential elections, which apparently hand victory to the main opposition leader - but not by enough votes to win outright.

The news sets the scene for a bruising election run-off.

According to the officials, Morgan Tsvangirai won 47 per cent of the vote against President Mugabe's 43 per cent. He needed more than 50 per cent to avoid a second round.

Mr Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), claimed to have won 50.3 per cent of the vote based on results published at polling stations, but a month later the official tally has still not been released, prompting accusations of vote rigging against the Government.

The figures leaked yesterday - a day before the candidates' agents were due to begin verifying results - suggest that the margin of Mr Tsvangirai's victory was too large for the Government to overturn credibly.

Mr Mugabe's regime has been preparing for a run-off, due within three weeks of the final results, by launching a violent campaign of intimidation against the MDC. The MDC said yesterday that 20 of its members had been murdered since the elections. But it remained unclear whether the MDC would take part in a run-off.

Zimbabweans had hoped that the election would bring positive change to their country, where inflation is running at 165,000 per cent. Instead, severe food, fuel and foreign currency shortages have been worsening along with the escalation in bloodshed.

Zimbabwe's proximity to economic collapse was thrown into the spotlight yesterday as the Government announced that it would float its currency on foreign exchange markets to bring in hard currency. Its foreign exchange reserves are all but empty after years of looting and the virtual destruction of the agricultural sector.

Gideon Gono, governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, said that the currency floatation would mean that "the availability of foreign exchange will gradually improve". But it remains to be seen who will be willing to trade in the Zimbabwean dollar, which is virtually worthless after years of overprinting and hyperinflation.

The announcement came hours after the regime lost one of its last sources of foreign revenue. Farmers called off the annual tobacco trading season in protest at government price-fixing. They tore up their crops of tobacco, the country's top foreign exchange earner, on the auction floors in protest at the Government's buying price of Z$70 million per kilogram - more than US$2,000 (£1,000) at the official exchange rate, but less than US$1 at the real black-market value.

Berison Mutemeri, a farmer from Ban-ket, northwest of Harare, said it cost Z$2 billion to transport each bale.

The official exchange rate is fixed at Z$30,000 to US$1, a rate that exists only on paper and to the benefit of senior officials able to purchase foreign currency. On the universally used black market, where rates shift daily, US$1 yesterday bought Z$100 million.

In the past, most of Zimbabwe's foreign exchange was earned from exported produce from its very productive white-owned farms. But that source of revenue was cut off catastrophically with the invasion and closure of most commercial farms under Mr Mugabe's land reform programme.

The lack of foreign exchange has been devastating for an economy now dependent on imports. Experts say that the economy would have collapsed years ago without the millions in foreign remittances sent home by its three million refugees and migrants in South Africa and elsewhere.

Zimbabwean notes are not even considered hard cash but "bearer's cheques", complete with an expiry date. All of Zimbabwe's current notes expire at the end of June 2008.

Economists say that the only way that Zimbabwe's currency can be rescued is by linking it to a hard currency such as the US dollar or the South African rand. That would probably require a large-scale monetary rescue package of the kind that international institutions would only be prepared to implement if the current crisis was resolved and Mr Mugabe left.

Economists have argued that the fastest way to bring down the regime would be for Zimbaweans overseas to stop sending remittances, even if it meant that families would go hungry.

Some tobacco farmers had already decided not to sell their crops to the Government to deny them the means to earn foreign exchange. An informal boycott of black-market money-changers is also under way, with those holding foreign currency urged not to sell it to street traders, many of whom are in fact runners for the Reserve Bank and are using the black market to scoop up US dollars.