Ky­ron Reg­is

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

As the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic con­tin­ues to have an im­pact on the glob­al sup­ply of goods and ser­vices, con­sumers are al­ready fac­ing in­creased prices at the gro­ceries and are now be­ing told to brace for more in­creas­es.

Con­firm­ing this was Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT) pres­i­dent Ra­jiv Diptee yes­ter­day. “Peo­ple will al­ways as­sume that it’s the su­per­mar­kets rais­ing the prices, but there have been a pletho­ra of price in­creas­es from sup­pli­ers,” Diptee said.

He point­ed out that the su­per­mar­kets can nor­mal­ly ac­cess dis­counts or spe­cials on cer­tain items from sup­pli­ers, but with COVID-19 caus­ing ma­jor dis­rup­tions in in­ter­na­tion­al sup­ply chains this has been elim­i­nat­ed.

Cit­i­zens have been com­plain­ing to Guardian Me­dia about the in­creas­es in gro­cery bills and un­savoury price goug­ing dur­ing the COVID mea­sures.

Some gro­ceries yes­ter­day con­firmed that prices on some items will in­crease. While many of the items that will rise in cost re­main un­cer­tain, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the price of peas and nuts will sure­ly in­crease due to COVID’s im­pact on sup­pli­ers.

In a re­cent re­lease by the SATT, Diptee said events took a quick turn as sea­ports across the world be­gan clos­ing due to the virus at the be­gin­ning of March. He said this, in ad­di­tion to ‘stay-at-home’ or­ders, sparked waves of pan­ic buy­ing glob­al­ly, which in turn sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ed for­eign sup­plies.

The re­lease said the clo­sure of many glob­al ship­ping ports had im­pact­ed on freight cost with a con­comi­tant in­crease in prices.

“The equa­tion of lim­it­ed sup­ply ver­sus an in­creased de­mand for goods will fig­ure sig­nif­i­cant­ly on the fi­nal price of the prod­uct, with the end re­sult be­ing in­creased prices passed over to con­sumers,” Diptee said.

Yes­ter­day, Su­per Qual­i­ty Su­per­mar­ket own­er Fer­oze Khan agreed the price in­crease com­ing from the lo­cal sup­pli­ers were based on in­ter­na­tion­al price in­creas­es.

Khan split peas and lentil peas had made sig­nif­i­cant jumps. He said yel­low split peas nor­mal­ly goes for $200 to $250 a bag but has now dou­bled to ap­prox­i­mate­ly $450 per bag.

Gro­cery own­er Ku­mar Ma­haraj, who said that peas prices had gone up to $500 a bag in his ex­pe­ri­ence, al­so con­firmed this.

Khan said the price in­crease came about be­cause sup­plies that are usu­al­ly pur­chased from Cana­da are now com­ing from mer­chants in Mi­a­mi, which es­ca­lates the price.

Al­so con­firm­ing Diptee’s re­marks was Shamshad Ali, own­er of Price Club Su­per­mar­ket, who said: “Any price in­creas­es, whether to­day, yes­ter­day or to­mor­row, are based on the in­com­ing from the sup­pli­ers.”

Ali said the ba­sis of the re­tail in­dus­try leads to gro­cers ad­just­ing their prices ac­cord­ing to the cost of the goods re­ceived from their sup­pli­ers. He said when his gro­cery re­ceives its prod­uct from the sup­pli­ers, based on the price and item, the markup cost ranges be­tween 3 and 20 per cent.

When a sup­pli­er rais­es prices, Ali said, it is based on “the un­der­stand­ing that the sup­pli­ers in­ter­na­tion­al­ly have raised their prices.”

“We can­not con­firm or we can’t de­ny, but at the end of the day what­ev­er price we get we have to add our markup and that’s the price,” Ali said.

Khan al­so said he is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing some short­ages as well. He said his gro­cery would nor­mal­ly pur­chase 25 bags of split peas and lentil peas a week but this week, the sup­pli­er on­ly gave him five bags of split peas and lentils each.

“Food se­cu­ri­ty is per­haps the far more chal­leng­ing is­sue that we need to fo­cus on be­cause there are lo­gis­ti­cal chal­lenges through­out the world,” Khan said.

“If you op­er­ate in an en­vi­ron­ment that is mar­ket-dri­ven, we some­times think we shouldn’t have mar­ket prices when it isn’t go­ing in our favour,” said Khan.

He said mar­ket forces drove oil prices to be­low ze­ro and it will al­so bring the price back up.

Not­ing that ma­jor pork pro­duc­er Smith­field Foods had closed its pro­cess­ing plant in the Unit­ed States and sent home ap­prox­i­mate­ly 700 work­ers due to COVID-19, he said he ex­pect­ed short­ages and price in­creas­es for pork with­in the next month.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Khan not­ed that many farm­ers have had to dump their pro­duce be­cause the sec­tors and in­dus­tries they would nor­mal­ly sup­ply to­—like ships, restau­rants and the avi­a­tion cater­ers—were now closed.

He said the un­cer­tain­ty with re­gard to when busi­ness­es will be re­opened is weigh­ing up­on farm­ers’ de­ci­sions to plant - which can al­so cause a short­age if they are not pre­pared to meet the de­mand when the econ­o­my restarts.

With re­spect to food se­cu­ri­ty, Khan said on av­er­age the food chains would have about three months of food cov­er.

Diptee con­firmed this and al­so said a lack of ac­cess to for­eign ex­change im­pedes the lo­gis­tics of food im­porters.

“The Prime Min­is­ter, when this whole thing hap­pened, said that there was go­ing to be a fa­cil­i­ty with EX­IM (Ex­port-Im­port Bank) to re­lease US dol­lars to im­porters of food. What has hap­pened is that we have not seen that for­eign ex­change be­ing re­leased to im­porters as yet,” Diptee said.

When Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed the EX­IM bank on this is­sue, it said it is aware of the is­sue and has been work­ing with the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try and the pri­vate sec­tor to proac­tive­ly ad­dress po­ten­tial sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions.

The bank’s CEO Navin Dook­er­an said: “In fact, over the last few weeks, we have al­ready com­menced pri­or­i­ty forex al­lo­ca­tions for es­sen­tial items and the in­puts in­to lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing of the key es­sen­tial sup­plies.”