The Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go has said its mem­ber­ship is fac­ing a bal­anc­ing act con­cern­ing the im­por­ta­tion of food.

Pres­i­dent of the as­so­ci­a­tion, Bion­di Bachew, said most of his mem­bers go to the im­port mar­ket in a bid to pro­vide af­ford­abil­i­ty and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to con­sumers, but stressed that the lo­cal agri­cul­ture sec­tor need­ed sup­port to help off­set the ris­ing cost of liv­ing.
This coun­try’s food im­port bill has con­tin­ued to rise, while con­sumers have al­so com­plained about the ris­ing costs of gro­ceries.

These con­cerns would have on­ly in­creased giv­en var­i­ous geopo­lit­i­cal and sup­ply chain chal­lenges, which threat­en to push prices up fur­ther, but Bachew de­fend­ed the de­ci­sion to im­port prod­ucts by su­per­mar­kets.

“Im­ports help us man­age the bal­ance be­tween af­ford­abil­i­ty and choice, which is vi­tal for house­holds al­ready grap­pling with the cost of liv­ing. Strik­ing the bal­ance, the re­al chal­lenge then is bal­ance,” he said at the open­ing of the Caribbean Food & Bev­er­age Trade Show at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in Ma­coya yes­ter­day.

Bachew ac­knowl­edged the call to re­duce the food im­port bill, but said the nec­es­sary ma­chin­ery must be put in place for the agri­cul­ture sec­tor to thrive in the coun­try.

He said, “We must con­tin­ue to im­port smart­ly and strate­gi­cal­ly while ag­gres­sive­ly sup­port­ing our lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers and farm­ers. This means cre­at­ing a sys­tem where im­ports are lever­aged to sta­bilise the mar­ket but lo­cal pro­duc­ers are giv­en the pol­i­cy sup­port, in­vest­ment and dis­tri­b­u­tion op­tions to thrive.”

The trade show was sin­gled out by Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram as a step to­wards im­prov­ing food se­cu­ri­ty in T&T.

He said, “We recog­nise that build­ing re­silience in agri­cul­ture re­quires more than just pro­duc­tion, it re­quires part­ner­ship, in­no­va­tion and op­por­tu­ni­ties such as this op­por­tu­ni­ty cre­at­ed this morn­ing, where farm­ers, proces­sors and en­tre­pre­neurs can con­nect with mar­kets and es­tab­lish sus­tain­able busi­ness link­ages.”

The two-day event, host­ed by the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, is set to con­tin­ue to­day.

—PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER