raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Richie Sookhai has called up­on the Gov­ern­ment to as­sist in con­trol­ling ris­ing food prices.

“Al­though we fin­ished 2021, it was a bit of a rough year again. It was rougher than 2020, every­one will agree with that. We are hop­ing in 2022 even in the face of in­flat­ed prices, we can come out a bit stronger at least at the end. With that be­ing said we will need Gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion in terms of the con­trol­ling of the in­fla­tion prices. In terms of how we im­port food in­to the coun­try,” he said.

Sookhai spoke yes­ter­day at the Peo­ple’s Choice Award host­ed by the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT) at Xtra Foods Su­per­mar­ket, En­deav­our Road, Ch­agua­nas. Xtra Foods Su­per­mar­ket was the re­cip­i­ent of the award for 2021.

Sookhai al­so spoke about the scarci­ty of for­eign ex­change which is need­ed to do busi­ness but at the same time should be used to im­port es­sen­tial prod­ucts rather than lux­u­ry items. “For­eign ex­change is a huge is­sue. It’s good to see our shelves are filled but at the same time we need to check how many of these items are im­port­ed and how many are lux­u­ry. Al­though there are tax­es on some of these items, you still see them fly­ing off the shelves and we have to be mind­ful and do due dili­gence.”

His state­ment comes on the heels of ris­ing prices for prod­ucts like flour which is need­ed for pop­u­lar­ly con­sumed food like dou­bles and bread. There has al­so been price in­creas­es in al­co­holic bev­er­ages like Carib beer. The Cen­tral Bank in its lat­est Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy An­nounce­ment (MPA) at the end of De­cem­ber said ex­ter­nal price pres­sures are hav­ing an im­pact on do­mes­tic in­fla­tion. The bank stat­ed that it would main­tain its re­po rate at 3.5 per cent. The MPA said head­line in­fla­tion mea­sured 3.9 per cent year-on-year in Oc­to­ber com­pared with 2.4 per cent a month ear­li­er.

“Food in­fla­tion surged to 7.6 per cent from a 5.8 per cent in Sep­tem­ber and it is like­ly to rise giv­en the sit­u­a­tion in the glob­al grain mar­ket,” the re­port said. Xtra Foods Mar­ket­ing Man­ag­er Daniel Austin who al­so spoke at the cer­e­mo­ny at­trib­uted their suc­cess to the hard work of em­ploy­ees and a ded­i­cat­ed cus­tomer staff.

“We thank our em­ploy­ees for the sac­ri­fices that they made dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. This award is for you.”

SATT Pres­i­dent Ra­jiv Diptee said that the su­per­mar­ket work­ers and in­dus­try as a whole have worked very hard to sat­is­fy the needs of the coun­try dur­ing the last two years of the pan­dem­ic which has been a very dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od for the coun­try.

“The staff of the su­per­mar­ket as­so­ci­a­tion have been serv­ing you tire­less­ly risk­ing their lives as front­lin­ers and giv­ing back to the na­tion to en­sure that you have been fed and you have been tak­en care of dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. I call them he­roes be­cause they have been here since the ini­tial lock­down in March 2020, risk­ing their lives be­fore vac­cines were ever avail­able.”