Clutch­ing a piece of pa­per con­tain­ing her hur­ried­ly writ­ten gro­cery list as she nav­i­gat­ed the aisles search­ing for ba­sic items such as flour, salt, toi­let pa­per, cof­fee and sausage, Sarah Sama­roo shook her head back and forth as she looked at flour prices.

Stand­ing still for a minute as she com­pared the var­i­ous prices at Ma­haraj West­side Su­per­mar­ket, Ari­ma, on Fri­day, she even­tu­al­ly reached for the 10 kg bag of Nu­trim­ix flour which is now re­tail­ing for $90.25.

Look­ing down at her list and men­tal­ly cal­cu­lat­ing what she had left to spend on the oth­er items, Sama­roo said she would have to for­go the sausage this time.

“I buy the flour first be­cause that is the most im­por­tant thing right now,” she said.

Re­quir­ing ba­sic items such as toi­let pa­per and salt, she smiled sheep­ish­ly as she pat­ted the con­tain­er of Fol­gers cof­fee and joked, “Every house needs...”

Point­ing to the trea­sured bag of flour ly­ing in the small trol­ley, she said, “This is the cheap­est brand right now that I can af­ford.”  

Sama­roo said the lat­est price hike by flour pro­duc­ers in T&T had forced her to scratch cer­tain food items off her week­ly gro­cery list.

In­di­cat­ing the in­crease had re­sult­ed in her pay­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly $40 more for the same item, the woman who strad­dles the low­er mid-in­come brack­et said, “I will have to leave out some gro­ceries to get this now.”

Asked how she planned to stretch her fixed in­come to get every­thing she need­ed, the 58-year-old who cel­e­brat­ed her birth­day yes­ter­day said, “I will have to find a way to buy few­er things. So I won’t be buy­ing bread and I have to leave off the sausage. I will make my own bread, roti and dumplings. I could stretch this flour fur­ther, so we could eat for a longer pe­ri­od.”

Say­ing that she in­tends to pur­chase a pack of rice next week, the woman, who be­longs to a fam­i­ly of five adults, added, “We had to change how we cook­ing and eat­ing. We are cook­ing just enough now…noth­ing to throw away.

 “Every­body had to come to­geth­er now. Be­fore every­one was do­ing their own thing, but now we have to pool to­geth­er.”

Re­stock­ing the shelves with flour, the su­per­mar­ket em­ploy­ee Mack­e­si Mur­ray said, “It seems to be sell­ing more now be­cause peo­ple buy­ing be­fore the price rise again.”

Mean­while, over at Sik-Hee Tom Gro­cery, Prince Street, Ari­ma, an of­fi­cial said they were brac­ing for high­er prices in the com­ing months as there are fears that fur­ther in­creas­es are not far off.

Con­cerned how this lat­est in­crease in flour, plus in­creas­es in oth­er food items and gro­ceries would af­fect cus­tomers who come main­ly from low-in­come house­holds, a se­nior man said, “Oil went up. Prunes went up. Cheese went up.”

De­clin­ing to have his name pub­lished, he said the prices of cook­ing spices such as cur­ry, masala, as­sort­ed pow­ders and salts, had al­so re­cent­ly in­creased by four per cent.

How­ev­er, price watch­ers re­port­ed be­ing most fright­ened by threats of glob­al sup­ply short­ages.

“We are al­ready hav­ing trou­ble get­ting plas­tic bags and Sty­ro­foam items. We are a chief sup­pli­er for all types of bags…but Sheikh said they have a short­age and so, we can’t get what we need,” the of­fi­cial said.

In ad­di­tion, he added, “Short­ages will dri­ve the prices up al­so.”

Deny­ing the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty was en­gag­ing in price goug­ing at this time, he said, “This is un­fair to say. We are try­ing our best to help cus­tomers. We are of­fer­ing spe­cials every month so to throw this on us, is un­fair.”

Ques­tion­ing why T&T had not yet placed the fo­cus back on agri­cul­ture, the of­fi­cial said there was still time for the au­thor­i­ties to act and re­duce the de­pen­dence on im­ports.

Kumar Maharaj, CEO, Westside supermarket.

'Whole­sale price for some re­tail items at su­per­mar­ket'

Own­er and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Jum­bo Foods Su­per­mar­ket and Ma­haraj West­side su­per­mar­ket, Ku­mar Ma­haraj said sev­er­al fac­tors were in­flu­enc­ing the in­crease in prices at this time.

In­creased ship­ping costs and the un­avail­abil­i­ty of raw ma­te­ri­als from coun­tries in the East, had fur­ther im­pact­ed sup­ply. Ma­haraj said an­oth­er is­sue that had been over­looked was the short shelf life of some im­port­ed prod­ucts.

Asked to in­di­cate how con­sumer spend­ing pat­terns and con­sump­tion trends had changed in the past sev­er­al months, Ma­haraj said there was a re­duc­tion in the pur­chas­ing pow­er pre­vi­ous­ly en­joyed by cus­tomers.

In­di­cat­ing his su­per­mar­ket was cur­rent­ly sur­vey­ing spend­ing pat­terns and re­view­ing  the most pop­u­lar prod­ucts that cus­tomers reach for when shop­ping, the for­mer Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent said, “Peo­ple have stopped buy­ing lux­u­ry items be­cause they can­not af­ford it.”

He added, “It is a fright­en­ing ex­pe­ri­ence com­ing down the line in this coun­try.”

Like Tom, Ma­haraj said it was not too late to shift the na­tion­al fo­cus back to agri­cul­ture as he spoke of arable lands ly­ing bare, while some have been lost to hous­ing.

He re­vealed he had been meet­ing with sup­pli­ers and dis­trib­u­tors to dis­cuss how “we can re­duce the pres­sure be­ing faced by our cus­tomers.”

From his end, he in­tends to in­clude a sub­sidy on ba­sic gro­cery items that every house­hold needs. He said, “This is just a se­ries of one of those things we will be do­ing here at West Side.”

Pre­dict­ing the sit­u­a­tion is go­ing to get worse, Ma­haraj said his main aim was to help mid to low-in­come fam­i­lies by re­duc­ing mark-ups and op­er­at­ing costs, so these sav­ings can be passed on to the con­sumer.

One new of­fer­ing he in­tends to roll out soon is whole­sale price for some re­tail items.