For much of the past year and a half, the sharp in­crease in gro­cery and su­per­mar­ket prices has had a crush­ing im­pact on many shop­pers.

Most peo­ple have not­ed that their gro­cery bills have in­creased, de­spite ad­just­ments to spend­ing habits or item se­lec­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the lat­est Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice, the av­er­age price of food and non-al­co­holic bev­er­ages in­creased by 11.2 per cent be­tween April 2022 and April 2023.

To prop­er­ly as­sess the im­pact of in­fla­tion, the Busi­ness Guardian, set out to es­tab­lish just how sig­nif­i­cant the in­creas­es have been and which items, in par­tic­u­lar, have changed the dy­nam­ic of the av­er­age gro­cery list.

In Au­gust 2020, dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, a large lo­cal chain of su­per­mar­kets in­tro­duced a bar­gain bag that in­clud­ed what was con­sid­ered to be es­sen­tial prod­ucts for a house­hold.

The bag came in two vari­a­tions: $300 or $150.

For the price com­par­i­son, the Busi­ness Guardian used the items list­ed in the $300 bag as its ref­er­ence point.

The bag con­tained most items that would oc­cu­py the gro­cery lists for house­holds; flour, sug­ar, rice, milk, peas and toi­letries.

The Busi­ness Guardian went to an east Trinidad store in the Trinidad where all of the items list­ed on its ini­tial bar­gain bag list from 2020 and dis­cov­ered that the en­tire bag would now cost $397.41, ex­clud­ing the cost of the Massy Bag. That is an in­crease of 32.47 per cent

Adding the cost of the bag would raise the price of the bag to $409. That’s an in­crease of $109 since 2020.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the lat­est in­car­na­tion of the chain’s bar­gain bag has re­moved and re­placed a few items.

A no­table item that ap­peared on the ini­tial bag was corn beef, which had been list­ed at $16.90 at the chain in Au­gust 2020. It has since been re­moved and re­placed with the far more eco­nom­i­cal op­tion of Vi­en­na Sausages which re­tail for $5.99 per tin.

Corn Beef was priced at $20.99 last week. In May 2022, Corned Beef was even more ex­pen­sive at the store with it be­ing priced at $22.50. Now while some read­ers may state that the chain may have more ex­pen­sive prices than oth­er gro­ceries, the Busi­ness Guardian com­pared its price to oth­er gro­ceries and not­ed the chain’s price was clos­er to the mean as a few gro­ceries had list­ed the item for an even high­er price, with one gro­cery even list­ing the cost of Corned Beef at $25.75 at that time.

In the re­cent CSO re­port, for the pe­ri­od April 2022 to April 2023, head­line in­fla­tion amount­ed to 5.95 per cent per cent. That was down from the 7.60 per cent for the pe­ri­od Feb­ru­ary 2022 to Feb­ru­ary 2023.

The CSO said the food and non-al­co­holic bev­er­ages de­creased from 147.8 in Feb­ru­ary 2023 to 146.1 in March 2023, re­flect­ing a de­crease of 1.2 per cent.

The CSO con­tin­ued in that re­port, “Con­tribut­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly to this de­crease was the gen­er­al down­ward move­ment in the prices of pump­kin, toma­toes, mel­on, hot pep­pers, cab­bage, me­l­on­gene, car­rots, pi­men­to, cel­ery and par­boiled rice.

“How­ev­er, the full im­pact of these price de­creas­es was off­set by the gen­er­al in­creas­es in the prices of chilled or frozen beef, fresh beef, chilled or frozen pork, cu­cum­ber, onions, or­anges, ta­ble mar­garine, grapes, corn and plan­tains.

“Price changes in this sec­tion for the month of March 2023 ac­count­ed for a net over­all de­crease of 0.3 points in the All Items In­dex,” said the CSO.

T&T’s of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics agency said: “A fur­ther re­view of the da­ta for March 2023 com­pared with Feb­ru­ary 2023 re­flect­ed an in­crease in the sub-in­dex for al­co­holic bev­er­ages and to­bac­co of 2.1 per cent. Al­so, this pe­ri­od showed a de­crease in the sub-in­dex for Health of 0.3 per cent. All oth­er sec­tions re­mained un­changed.”

Based on the Busi­ness Guardian’s analy­sis of gro­cery prices, items like sar­dines, tooth­paste, soap and mar­garine have de­creased as have the prices of most items that had been im­port­ed.

This per­haps can be at­trib­uted to the eas­ing of sup­ply chain con­straints.

In its T&T: 2023 Ar­ti­cle IV Con­sul­ta­tion, the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund not­ed, “High­er com­mod­i­ty and im­port prices af­fect­ed in­fla­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Im­ports from the US con­sti­tute about a third of to­tal im­ports. High­er en­er­gy prices al­so af­fect­ed trans­porta­tion costs, with the po­ten­tial to spill over in­to oth­er com­po­nents in the con­sumer bas­ket. Al­so, glob­al food prices sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect­ed do­mes­tic food prices. “

The lat­ter is­sue re­gard­ing trans­porta­tion costs may ex­plain why there re­main sev­er­al items that main­tain sim­i­lar price points to May 2022 com­pared to the be­gin­ning of June 2023..

The IMF said, “Start­ing in Jan­u­ary 2021, ex­ter­nal fac­tors—e.g., US in­fla­tion, high­er glob­al food prices, and changes in the val­u­a­tion of the US dol­lar—ex­plained most of the in­crease in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­fla­tion. Do­mes­tic fac­tors—e.g., growth of mon­e­tary base—start­ed to grad­u­al­ly play an in­creas­ing role in re­cent months.”

It con­tin­ued, “Oth­er fac­tors—the re­gres­sion’s resid­ual—have added be­tween 0.1 and 0.5 per cent to the head­line in­fla­tion dur­ing May and Sep­tem­ber 2022, and about 1.5 per cent in Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber 2022, co­in­cid­ing with the ad­just­ments in fu­el prices in April and Sep­tem­ber. This com­po­nent al­so might re­flect in­creas­ing in­fla­tion ex­pec­ta­tions, which could not be in­clud­ed in the mod­el di­rect­ly due to the ab­sence of their di­rect mea­sure.”

A con­stant com­mon­al­i­ty has been that these prices re­main far more ex­pen­sive than their May 2020 price list­ings.

Flour, which saw two price in­creas­es in 2022, with Na­tion­al Flour Mills not­ing that the Rus­sia-Ukraine con­flict se­vere­ly af­fect­ed its op­er­a­tions.

A two kilo­gram (kg) bag of flour now costs al­most $10 more than it did in 2020.

Like­wise, a four kg bag of par­boiled rice has al­so seen a sim­i­lar jump in price by $10 when com­pared to its price in 2020.

These items are the cor­ner­stone of the di­et of most in this coun­try.

In its Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy An­nounce­ment dat­ed March 31, 2023, the Cen­tral Bank stat­ed do­mes­tic in­fla­tion mod­er­at­ed in Jan­u­ary. Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice, head­line in­fla­tion de­cel­er­at­ed to 8.3 per cent in Jan­u­ary 2023 (year-on-year) com­pared with 8.7 per cent a month ear­li­er.

It is left to be seen if by the next Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy re­port if the pro­ject­ed eas­ing of in­fla­tion will fi­nal­ly lead to an ease on the pock­ets of the pub­lic.

Prices as list­ed:

Prod­uct*June 2, 2023*Au­gust 2020*May 2022

Red Kid­ney beans*$9.99* $9.70*$10.99

Chan­na in Brine*$8.75*$8.99*$10.99

Peas and Car­rots*$8.50*$8.25*$10.50

Madras Cur­ry*$12.15*$6.608$7.99

Yel­low split peas*$6.50*$4.95*$6.50

Par­boiled rice*$49.99*$39*$49.90

Brown Sug­ar*$23.50*N/A*$19.95

All pur­pose flour*$19.50/19.95*$12.95*$15.50

Soy­abean oil*$13.99*$17.25*$22.70

Con­densed milk*$14.99*$6.99*$8.95

Evap­o­rat­ed milk*$7.75*$6.50*$6.99

Pi­geon Peas*$11.99*$7.10*$8.75

Sea Salt*$3.19*$3.59*$3.60

Vi­en­na sausage*$5.99*$5.25*$5.90

Tu­na*$7.99/8.99*$8.25*$8.99

Corn Beef *$20.99*$16.90*$22.50

Sar­dines in wa­ter*$9.50*$8.50*$10.99

Ketchup*$11.99*$9.50*$9.50

Mac­a­roni*$11.99*$9.99*$11.50

Lentils*$8.99*$7.50*$9.50

Bath tis­sue*$14.95*$14.95*$14.99

Pow­dered de­ter­gent*$16.25*$14.25*N/A

Tooth­paste*$19.95*$19.95*$20.99

Ma­g­a­rine*$10.50*$8.75*$11.99

Soap*$13.30*$13.50*$15,65