KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Prices of bread, pas­tries and desserts will re­main the same at Lin­da’s Bak­ery, de­spite the coun­try’s ma­jor flour pro­duc­ers low­er­ing the cost of their prod­ucts. 

Pe­ter George, the own­er of the 63-year-old bak­ery op­er­at­ing in 15 lo­ca­tions in Trinidad, said its sup­pli­er, Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM), did not no­ti­fy com­mer­cial bak­eries of any ad­just­ment in flour prices. Com­mer­cial bak­eries use large sacks of flour, which were not sub­ject­ed to price ad­just­ments.

George said there was a no­ti­fi­ca­tion to re­tail­ers of the low­er­ing in the cost price of one and five pound bags, so con­sumers should see those ad­just­ments at su­per­mar­kets but not bak­eries.

“If and when that time comes, then, of course, we will be look­ing at what the im­pact it has. As of now, there has been no no­ti­fi­ca­tion to the com­mer­cial bak­eries that the price of flour to the com­mer­cial bak­eries has changed. So as of now, fun­da­men­tal­ly, there is no change in the pric­ing struc­ture of our bak­ery prod­ucts,” George said.

Lin­da’s held back on in­creas­ing prices for four months as raw ma­te­r­i­al ex­pens­es went up last year. Fol­low­ing a 10-33 per cent in­crease in flour prices from NFM and Nu­trim­ix in June 2022, the com­pa­ny had to fol­low oth­er bak­eries, roti shops and dou­bles ven­dors in in­creas­ing prices.

George agreed with food busi­ness own­ers who said the de­crease in flour prices does not com­pare to the in­creas­es in raw ma­te­r­i­al costs over the last three years.

He said food prices went up sig­nif­i­cant­ly, and al­though flour prices have de­creased, they are not back to pre-2022 lev­els. He added that in some busi­ness­es, flour was a small part of the in­put.

“So if flour makes up 30 per cent of your prod­uct and the flour prices go down by eight or nine per cent, you have a net ef­fect re­duc­tion of two to three per cent. That may not be enough to make re­tail­ers move their prices down­ward. It is not a sig­nif­i­cant enough re­duc­tion, so I think the key to this is that peo­ple who go to the re­tail su­per­mar­kets to buy flour should see flour prices a lit­tle bit cheap­er.”

Al­though re­duced ship­ping costs have dri­ven prices down, George does not fore­see fur­ther de­creas­es. He said busi­ness­es face many en­dem­ic chal­lenges, in­clud­ing ac­cess to ad­e­quate for­eign ex­change dol­lars and in­fla­tion.
While T&T has no con­trol over the price of wheat used in flour pro­duc­tion and en­er­gy prices, lo­cal chal­lenges, such as spend­ing on ex­tra se­cu­ri­ty, util­i­ties and in­creas­ing labour costs, con­tribute to in­fla­tion. He be­lieves pol­i­cy­mak­ing can help ad­dress ef­fi­cien­cy and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is­sues.

“If you have to spend $10,000 to $15,000 a month on se­cu­ri­ty, there is on­ly so much the busi­ness can ab­sorb, and if the en­vi­ron­ment in Trinidad is one where you have to have ex­ter­nal se­cu­ri­ty to keep your prod­ucts and busi­ness safe, that is a cost that is go­ing to have to be passed to the cus­tomer.”

Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC), Bal­dath Ma­haraj, said he un­der­stands why bak­eries, roti shops and dou­bles ven­dors are re­luc­tant to re­duce prices.

Ma­haraj said when these busi­ness­es in­creased their prices last year due to flour, there were ad­di­tion­al prices they ab­sorbed. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, there were in­fla­tion­ary pres­sures on trans­porta­tion, labour and oth­er in­puts.

“While the price of flour went down frac­tion­al­ly, we un­der­stand why they are not go­ing to budge right away. How­ev­er, if there are fur­ther de­creas­es in flour and oil in the next few months, it may be a good time to re­view prices,” Ma­haraj said.

He said dou­bles, which sell for $6 in many places, are still low priced.