SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Be­fore the 2023 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion on Mon­day, the cost of some food items in su­per­mar­kets had al­ready in­creased be­tween 2.5 to 44 per cent, plac­ing an even heav­ier fi­nan­cial bur­den on cus­tomers who are strug­gling to make ends meet. Con­sumers now have to brace for fur­ther price in­creas­es as a re­sult of the hike in fu­el prices. And while this has left con­sumers in a tail­spin, one im­porter/ex­porter of goods has iden­ti­fied an­oth­er predica­ment–a loom­ing food short­age.

CEO of Ma­haraj West­side Su­per­mar­ket Ku­mar Ma­haraj said last week that the price of dozens of gro­cery items had in­creased, and he de­scribed it as "the worst" he had seen at his Ari­ma es­tab­lish­ment in decades. The busi­ness­man de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as fright­en­ing. "Up to last week and the week be­fore we have seen a lot of price in­creas­es. I am al­most cer­tain that 50 per cent of the items in the gro­cery went up," Ma­haraj added.

Prices of items have been es­ca­lat­ing glob­al­ly fol­low­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic which trig­gered short­ages of prod­ucts cou­pled with hefty freight costs as ports around the world were forced to shut down or slow down op­er­a­tions. They have re­cent­ly start­ed see­ing freight charges go down grad­u­al­ly, but food prices have been soar­ing glob­al­ly as a re­sult of high­er fer­tilis­er costs and record-high fu­el prices.

The sit­u­a­tion has been fur­ther ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the on­go­ing war be­tween Rus­sia and Ukraine. Ma­haraj al­so iden­ti­fied de­lays in get­ting raw ma­te­ri­als and labour short­ages.

Ma­haraj, who has been in the su­per­mar­ket busi­ness for decades, sells a va­ri­ety of lo­cal and im­port­ed brands amount­ing to 20,000 items.

He iden­ti­fied some items where prices went up.

"One of the best choco­late drinks in the coun­try and the world to­day went up last Mon­day by 44 per cent. That is the worst I have seen in my his­to­ry. It is bad. It is fright­en­ing."

He pro­vid­ed a list of the items which in­creased in cost re­cent­ly.

*A case of 12 (300 gram) pack­ets of the choco­late drink which cost $314 has now jumped to $452.

*A bale of 2 kg rice rose from $186 to $210.

*A case of 950 ml may­on­naise in­creased from $239.50 to $331.25

*A case of 900 grams of laun­dry de­ter­gent went from $229.83 to $321.98

CEO of Maharaj Westside Supermarket Kumar Maharaj Kumar Maharaj.

Ma­haraj said lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured goods al­so climbed by 31 per cent.

'De­cent peo­ple shoplift­ing'

Ma­haraj said in some in­stances im­porters are re­ceiv­ing ex­pired goods or goods close to their ex­pi­ra­tion date be­cause of the length of time it takes to get here.

"Sup­pli­ers are los­ing mon­ey. That is one of the caus­es of the in­crease in price be­cause of the short shelf life."

The busi­ness­man said last Di­vali an or­der was placed for ten con­tain­ers of ghee.

"We got one con­tain­er the day be­fore Di­vali. We or­dered the same thing for this Di­vali. We got one con­tain­er so far. Right now ghee is short."

He said once de­mand out­strips sup­ply the price would sky­rock­et.

As a re­sult of the ris­ing costs, Ma­haraj said shoplift­ing has in­creased from one to sev­en per cent at his busi­ness place.

"I am talk­ing about de­cent peo­ple shoplift­ing be­cause they have no al­ter­na­tive. We had to hire ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty."

In the com­ing days, Ma­haraj said he in­tends to re­struc­ture his su­per­mar­ket to the needs of his cus­tomers.

"Peo­ple just can­not af­ford the ex­ot­ic items and the high-end prod­ucts right now. So we are re­struc­tur­ing. By the next month, we will have more than 1,000 items re­duced to help cit­i­zens soft­en the im­pact."

Extra Foods Marketing Manager Daniel Austin.

Shirley Bahadur

Sup­pli­ers have dif­fi­cul­ty ob­tain­ing prod­ucts

Sim­i­lar­ly, Xtra Foods mar­ket­ing man­ag­er Daniel Austin said he too ob­served prices had re­cent­ly in­creased.

"Ob­vi­ous­ly, yes, we would have had price in­creas­es. A lot of lo­cal sup­pli­ers are hav­ing prob­lems with re­gard to ac­quir­ing prod­ucts around the globe which are in short sup­ply. A lot of them are say­ing be­cause of the short­ages of ma­te­ri­als they are in­cur­ring a lot of price in­creas­es across the spec­trum."

Asked if he had re­ceived word from man­u­fac­tur­ers and sup­pli­ers re­gard­ing an ad­just­ment in the price of gro­cery items fol­low­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert's fu­el hike on Mon­day, Austin said no.

The prices of pre­mi­um, su­per and kerosene in­creased by $1 to $7.75, $6.97 and $4.50 re­spec­tive­ly while diesel moved from $3.91 to $4.41.

How­ev­er, what he no­ticed in re­cent times was that the buy­ing pat­terns of most cus­tomers have changed.

 "In that, some mid­dle and up­per-class shop­pers have been look­ing through our fly­ers for spe­cials, bar­gains and dis­count­ed items. I think what they re­alise is that the mon­ey they save in the gro­cery can be used for oth­er things."

Austin said the rush for the fly­ers even caused two cus­tomers to square off at their Ari­ma branch on Thurs­day.

Cus­tomers, he said, are al­so shop­ping with a list of spe­cif­ic items and have been us­ing cal­cu­la­tors, pens and pa­per to tab­u­late the over­all cost of items in their trol­leys.

Rajiv Diptee, president of the Supermarket Association of T&T.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

"They are stick­ing with­in a bud­get. Oth­ers are buy­ing cheap­er brands."

Diptee: High­er fu­el costs will im­pact every­thing

Weigh­ing in on the is­sue, the pres­i­dent of the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T Ra­jiv Diptee said once the cost of fu­el in­creas­es every­thing else will be im­pact­ed. "There is al­so the pub­lic per­cep­tion that the in­crease in trans­port will dri­ve up the cost of goods. That trans­la­tion is not in­stan­ta­neous in our world. We have com­pa­nies in sup­ply and dis­tri­b­u­tion that mea­sure the im­pact of their op­er­a­tions. The larg­er the com­pa­ny the more they are able to ab­sorb the price in­crease."

He said the small­er com­pa­nies would have no choice but to pass it on.

Diptee said the pop­u­la­tion was still re­cov­er­ing from the fall­out of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and would just have to man­age with the high­er fu­el cost.

CEO of Arima Discount Mart Import and Export Distributors Balliram Maharaj.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

Food prices sky­rock­et be­tween 2020 and 2022–Bal­li­ram

CEO of Ari­ma Dis­count Mart Im­port and Ex­port Dis­trib­u­tors Bal­li­ram Ma­haraj said he had doc­u­ment­ed ev­i­dence that food prices had sky­rock­et­ed from 15 to al­most 150 per cent be­tween the pe­ri­od 2020 and 2022.

Among the items were cook­ing oil, corned beef, lentils, peas and car­rots, split peas, lamb shoul­der, dry pi­geon peas, beef clods and mack­er­el.

He com­pared the price of a case of 500 ml of cook­ing oil which was $115 in 2020. It now costs $234.83

"Over the last 30 months, it was the worst I have ever seen in food prices dur­ing my 65 years of busi­ness," Ma­haraj told the Sun­day Guardian on Wednes­day at his Ari­ma of­fice.

In pre­vi­ous years, he said food prices would have in­creased by five per cent.

"Now it is 125, 150 and 200 per cent in some cas­es."

The mark dif­fer­ence in prices has pushed cus­tomers to be more se­lec­tive in what they buy.

Ma­haraj said be­fore the bud­get he had rec­om­mend­ed to the Gov­ern­ment strate­gies and tac­tics to mit­i­gate ris­ing food in­fla­tion which was ig­nored.

The 81-year-old busi­ness­man sug­gest­ed low­er­ing tax­es on ba­sic and es­sen­tial food items to ease the bur­den and pres­sures on low­er and mid­dle-in­come earn­ers.

He point­ed out that one pound of lo­cal chick­en "leg and thigh" is $18. How­ev­er, if the Gov­ern­ment tem­porar­i­ly re­moves tax­es as­so­ci­at­ed with im­port­ed "leg and thigh" con­sumers can pay around $5.20 a pound. He said CIF (cost, in­sur­ance and freight) amounts to US$0.45 for each pound of im­port­ed leg and thigh.

Ma­haraj said the Gov­ern­ment could al­so con­sid­er im­pos­ing a 60-per-cent du­ty on im­port­ed french fries.

"The rev­enues ob­tained from these tax­es can be used to fund lo­cal agribusi­ness to in­crease food se­cu­ri­ty. The an­nu­al val­ue of im­port­ing pota­to fries amounts to $1 bil­lion."

The busi­ness­man said the im­por­ta­tion of black-eyed peas and red beans out­side Cari­com au­to­mat­i­cal­ly at­tracts 40 per cent tax­es.

While he re­mains com­mit­ted to Cari­com, Ma­haraj said the ex­ist­ing trade agree­ments need to be re­viewed and re­vised, in light of the pan­dem­ic and on­go­ing con­flict be­tween Rus­sia and Ukraine.

"We are head­ing down a slip­pery slope. We are not far from Haiti. It's wor­ry­ing."

Haiti has one of the high­est lev­els of food in­se­cu­ri­ty in the world.

He ex­pressed con­cern that T&T was not mov­ing to­wards food se­cu­ri­ty.

Ma­haraj pre­dict­ed that cer­tain foods would go scarce as some coun­tries have been hoard­ing their sup­plies for self-suf­fi­cien­cy.