An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try is ap­peal­ing to busi­ness­es such as su­per­mar­kets, dis­trib­u­tors and oth­er re­tail­ers to be fair and pass on de­clines in price charged to con­sumers, when there has been a de­crease in in­ter­na­tion­al prices for com­modi­ties sold in T&T.

The min­istry made the call as there have been sev­er­al com­modi­ties that have al­ready ex­pe­ri­enced price re­duc­tions; the lat­est be­ing Nu­trim­ix which re­duced its flour prices be­tween 5 per cent and 17 per cent last Fri­day.

In a news re­lease, Nu­trim­ix said the re­duc­tion was due to sev­er­al fac­tors, in­clud­ing the glob­al de­crease in wheat prices and ship­ping costs, as well as the com­pa­ny’s im­proved in­ter­nal sys­tems, con­trols, and ini­tia­tives to in­crease the ef­fi­cien­cy of its op­er­a­tions while re­duc­ing milling and pro­cess­ing costs.

In a re­sponse to the Busi­ness Guardian’s query on food price trends be­tween last year and this year, the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try said the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) has re­port­ed the rate of in­fla­tion for Jan­u­ary 2024 stood at 0.3 per cent. It in­creased mar­gin­al­ly to 0.8 per cent, both in Feb­ru­ary 2024 and March 2024.

The rate of in­fla­tion in March 2024 was sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er than its val­ue of 7.3 per cent record­ed in March 2023.

Do­mes­tic in­fla­tion trends

The min­istry said the food and non-al­co­holic bev­er­ages in­dex dipped from 147.9 in Feb­ru­ary to 146.2 in March 2024, re­flect­ing a 1.1 per cent month-on-month de­crease. That is a 0.1 per cent year-on-year in­crease from 146.1 in March 2023.

Ac­cord­ing to the CSO, con­tribut­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly to this de­crease was the gen­er­al down­ward move­ment in the prices of fresh whole chick­en, toma­toes, cu­cum­ber, ched­dar cheese, ta­ble mar­garine, cel­ery, fresh king fish, plan­tains, fresh carite and soya bean oil.

How­ev­er, the full im­pact of these price de­creas­es was off­set by the gen­er­al in­crease in the prices of grapes, hot pep­pers, or­anges, me­l­on­gene, bo­di, ochroes, pump­kin, frozen whole chick­en, par­boiled rice, and oth­er fruit drinks.

In­ter­na­tion­al vs do­mes­tic food prices

A clos­er ex­am­i­na­tion of the in­ter­na­tion­al and do­mes­tic price trends re­vealed a pos­i­tive cor­re­la­tion in the case of ce­re­als, meat, and dairy and a neg­a­tive cor­re­la­tion in the case of veg­etable oils and sug­ar.

The Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try ac­knowl­edged that there were oth­er fac­tors in­clud­ing freight and trans­porta­tion that would in­flu­ence the fi­nal re­tail price.

It not­ed that the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions (FAO) record­ed a month-on-month de­cline in in­ter­na­tion­al ce­re­al prices due to de­clin­ing wheat prices over the re­port­ing pe­ri­od, as a re­sult of strong ex­port com­pe­ti­tion.

T&T’s top im­port source coun­try for ce­re­als, par­tic­u­lar­ly wheat, over the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to April 2024, was the USA.

The min­istry out­lined that giv­en wheat pro­vides a ma­jor in­put in­to the pro­duc­tion of flour, it was pleased to see that do­mes­ti­cal­ly, the Con­sumer Af­fairs Di­vi­sion (CAD) re­port­ed no­tice­able de­creas­es in the prices of pre-pack­aged all-pur­pose flour, specif­i­cal­ly the 2 kilo­gramme (kg) flour, which de­clined by $3.51 from $21.81 to $18.30 when com­par­ing April 2023 to April 2024.

The 10 kg bags of flour de­creased by $20.60 from $94.65 to $74.05 when com­par­ing April 2023 to April 2024.

Ce­re­al prod­ucts such as corn­flakes 20 oz, prepack­aged rice and mac­a­roni al­so ex­pe­ri­enced mar­gin­al de­creas­es of be­tween 0.9 and 3.0 per cent.

As it per­tains to veg­etable oils, the CAD not­ed when com­par­ing April 2023 to April 2024, olive oil (Ex­tra Vir­gin) 1 litre (L), ex­pe­ri­enced a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease of $19.12, mov­ing from $114.68 to $133.80. In con­trast, soy­abean oil (3.8 L) ex­pe­ri­enced the largest de­crease in price by $12.98, mov­ing from $89.81 to $76.83.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, de­creas­es were al­so ob­served in veg­etable oil (900ml), cook­ing mar­garine (Gold­en Ray), ta­ble mar­garine (Blue Band), and soya 0il (900ml).

These de­creas­es ranged from around 7 per cent to 13 per cent.

Con­cern­ing the dairy price in­dex in March, world but­ter and cheese prices rose the most, how­ev­er, by April cheese prices fell slight­ly but but­ter prices con­tin­ued to in­crease due to steady im­port de­mand.

The CAD stat­ed do­mes­tic prices for fresh but­ter fol­lowed a sim­i­lar trend, show­ing an in­crease of $1.01 from March to April.

Like­wise, the month-on-month change for lo­cal cheese prices, par­tic­u­lar­ly ched­dar cheese, de­clined in March by $0.61, fur­ther de­clin­ing in April by $1.10.

Over­all, fresh but­ter in­creased by 1.1 per cent (year-on-year) where­as ched­dar cheese de­creased by 17.9 per cent (year-on-year).

The FAO in­di­cat­ed that whole milk pow­der prices re­bound­ed mod­er­ate­ly due to in­creased de­mand for medi­um-term sup­plies and sea­son­al­ly de­clin­ing milk pro­duc­tion in Ocea­nia. Lo­cal­ly, pow­dered milk (full cream) 800g and 225g in­creased by 3.0 per cent and 0.8 per cent re­spec­tive­ly.

Tak­ing a look at the meat price in­dex over­all, based on sur­veys con­duct­ed by CAD, do­mes­tic meat prices de­creased by 4.2 per cent.

When com­par­ing April 2023 to April 2024, the high­est meat prod­uct in­crease was chick­en franks (reg­u­lar hot dogs) by 3.9 per cent or $0.61. Where­as, chick­en thighs (frozen), ex­pe­ri­enced the largest per­cent­age de­crease by 12.3 per cent or $2.17.

Ze­ro­ing in on the sug­ar prices, the CAD’s sur­veys showed that sug­ar prices in­creased in all sug­ar prod­ucts sur­veyed by the CAD. Gran­u­lat­ed sug­ar (1800g) ex­pe­ri­enced the largest year-on-year in­crease by 12.4 per cent.

Oth­er sug­ar price in­creas­es ranged from ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5 per cent to 8.3 per cent. Based on the sur­veys con­duct­ed by CAD, it was ob­served that lo­cal prices of sug­ar were not re­flec­tive of the de­clin­ing in­ter­na­tion­al sug­ar price trends.

Fol­low­ing this break­down of some com­mod­i­ty prices, the min­istry is strong­ly en­cour­ag­ing busi­ness­es to be rea­son­able in their pric­ing and take in­to ac­count the ef­fect of com­mod­i­ty prices on con­sumers and house­holds.

Su­per­mar­kets re­spond

Com­ment­ing on the min­istry’s state­ment and the da­ta pro­vid­ed, Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ra­jiv Diptee said many su­per­mar­kets com­pete with dis­count spe­cials and pro­mo­tions, which are ad­ver­tised in the dai­ly news­pa­pers.

In ex­plain­ing how the prices work for the su­per­mar­kets, Diptee said the sup­ply chain in­volves dis­trib­u­tors, im­porters, and man­u­fac­tur­ers, and the fin­ished pre­vail­ing mar­ket prices are then passed on to the su­per­mar­kets.

“It is im­por­tant to un­der­stand that there is no price fix­ing or any price dis­tor­tion in the bar­gain chains. T&T is not pri­mar­i­ly a man­u­fac­tur­er or proces­sor of whole foods. We im­port large­ly fin­ished prod­ucts and what man­u­fac­tur­ing that comes out of this coun­try, is done with im­port­ed in­puts for pro­duc­tion and those in­puts are at the pre­vail­ing mar­ket rate.

“We have to work with the in­flat­ed glob­al prices that are be­ing passed on to us right now. Where the price re­duc­tions do come, we pass those on to the con­sumers,” Diptee con­clud­ed.

The Busi­ness Guardian chat­ted with a few peo­ple about their month­ly gro­cery ex­pen­di­ture and whether their buy­ing pat­terns had changed.

Cindy Paul, 46, said she is cur­rent­ly in be­tween jobs and all her month­ly bills have been pil­ing up.

“My month­ly gro­cery bill went from $2,000 to $3,500 per month last year. This year in April I spent $3,000. I’m most­ly buy­ing the ba­sics—flour, sug­ar, oil, rice, pota­toes, and so on to feed my fam­i­ly. The pat­terns are fluc­tu­at­ing, and I wish I could go back to that $2,000 bill,” she said.

Trevon Naipaul, 59, said he spends ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2,000 each month on gro­ceries. Apart from the ba­sic food items such as flour, rice, sug­ar, and milk, he al­so spends mon­ey on toi­letries for the fam­i­ly, which can be cost­ly too.