Con­densed milk pro­duced re­gion­al­ly such as in Ja­maica car­ries no du­ties as op­posed to ex­tra-re­gion­al milk and an­oth­er gov­ern­ment guar­an­teed long-term fa­cil­i­ty of up to $500 mil­lion in loan guar­an­tees will soon be launched for small and medi­um busi­ness­es.

Min­is­ter of Trade Paula Gopee-Scoon yes­ter­day cit­ed the mea­sures among those geared to de­crease food prices. She was re­ply­ing in the Sen­ate to Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark’s queries on ris­ing food and cook­ing oil prices and steps be­ing tak­en to mit­i­gate the cost of liv­ing in­creas­es.

Gopee-Scoon list­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s re­spons­es to price in­creas­es since 2021, in­clud­ing the re­moval of Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) on some food items.

Whether some foods still car­ry­ing VAT would be ze­ro-rat­ed, Gopee- Scoon said, “Quite a lengthy list of food items were of­fered for ze­ro-rat­ing in the 2022 Bud­get, but this Gov­ern­ment is quite con­cerned about the pop­u­la­tion (and) the ef­fect of price in­creas­es and we’ll al­ways have in mind the pop­u­la­tion’s needs and these mat­ters will re­main be­fore us al­ways.”

On fur­ther sus­pend­ing the Com­mon Ex­ter­nal Tar­iff ( CET) since Mark said con­densed milk has a 30 per cent du­ty, Gopee-Scoon not­ed that is on ex­tra-re­gion­al milk, but Ja­maican pro­duced con­densed milk car­ries no du­ties.

Gopee-Scoon said in­fla­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go ba­si­cal­ly im­port­ed in­fla­tion- was lev­el­ling off in March when the ef­fects of the Rus­sia-Ukraine war oc­curred. She warned that vig­i­lance is need­ed due to that and in­fla­tion re­mains a cause of con­cern for the Gov­ern­ment.

Gopee-Scoon said the most re­cent da­ta in Cen­tral Bank’s (May) Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Re­port re­vealed that in March 2022, the year-on-year head­line in­fla­tion was 4.1 per cent, core in­fla­tion 3.2 per cent and food in­fla­tion 7.9 per cent.

Month­ly head­line in­fla­tion in March 2022 was record­ed at ze­ro per cent, month­ly core in­fla­tion ze­ro per cent and month­ly food price in­fla­tion -0.2 per cent.

“How­ev­er, the ef­fect on in­fla­tion of the war in Ukraine and oth­er sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions is far-reach­ing and un­pre­dictable, so we in T&T need to be vig­i­lant.”

“Cen­tral Bank’s re­port in­di­cat­ed that sup­ply side fac­tors such as the ac­cel­er­a­tion in in­ter­na­tion­al food prices, high­er ship­ping costs and lo­gis­ti­cal de­lays had no­table pass-through to do­mes­tic prices, hence lead­ing to an in­creased in­fla­tion­ary en­vi­ron­ment.”

The Min­is­ter cit­ed glob­al in­fla­tion of 8.6 per cent in the US and 8.1 Eu­rope.

“In­fla­tion in T&T at this time, 4.1 per cent is well be­low the US, but it is a cause for con­cern be­cause we’re not im­mune from glob­al events.”

She added this coun­try is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing im­port­ed in­fla­tion be­cause it de­pends on im­ports of food and oth­er prod­ucts.

Gopee-Scoon said, “The FAO es­ti­mat­ed in­ter­na­tion­al food and feed prices could rise be­tween 8 per cent to 20 per cent as a re­sult of the Rus­sia- Ukraine con­flict. Both are known as the bread­bas­kets to the world, to­geth­er, ac­count­ing for close to 30 per cent of the world’s ex­port­ed wheat. Dis­rup­tions to agri­cul­tur­al ac­tiv­i­ties of these two ma­jor ex­porters of sta­ple com­modi­ties threat­en food se­cu­ri­ty glob­al­ly.”

Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed a few days ago that con­sumers will soon be pay­ing more for rice as two brands of rice–Old Mac and Rain­bow–are set for a five per cent in­crease. The price hike was con­firmed by the CEO of Trinidad Par­boil Ltd/Old Mac Agro, Li­aquat Ali.

Su­per­mar­ket op­er­a­tors al­so con­firmed that there was a ten to 20 per cent hike in the cost of rice in the last six months.

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