The price of an­oth­er sta­ple is com­ing down.

Days af­ter two of the coun­try’s flour pro­duc­ers an­nounced a drop in the price of flour prod­ucts, JMH En­ter­pris­es Ltd has re­duced the price of the Par Ex­cel­lence rice by 10 per cent.

In a news re­lease, JMH said, “Like flour, rice is al­so a sta­ple food that had been pre­vi­ous­ly af­fect­ed by ris­ing glob­al freight and com­mod­i­ty prices. How­ev­er, with­out ad­just­ing our prod­uct sizes, we are of­fer­ing low­er prices for the same great qual­i­ty Par Ex­cel­lence rice that our cus­tomers love.”

The com­pa­ny con­tin­ued, “We know that this de­vel­op­ment will be wel­comed as it of­fers respite to our cus­tomers who have been grap­pling with in­fla­tion and stretched bud­gets.

This re­duc­tion in the price of rice will pro­vide a mea­sure of fi­nan­cial re­lief to house­holds. It will help fam­i­lies in meet­ing their ba­sic nu­tri­tion­al re­quire­ments with­out putting pres­sure on their pock­ets. JMH En­ter­pris­es Ltd re­mains com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing high qual­i­ty rice that is af­ford­able to all.”

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, own­er of JMH En­ter­pris­es, Christo­pher James, said he is able to re­duce the re­tail price of the rice he sells be­cause of the re­duc­tion in ship­ping rates.

He added that the price of rice in Brazil and Uruguay—from where he im­ports the par­boiled rice he sells on the lo­cal mar­ket—has re­turned to pre-COVID-19 lev­els.

James said he fig­ures that JMH En­ter­pris­es sup­plies about 35 per cent of the par­boiled rice con­sumed in T&T.

Last Mon­day, Nu­trim­ix an­nounced that its price re­duc­tion would range from 10 per cent to 13 per cent on its two kilo­gramme (kg) flour and 10 per cent to 12 per cent on its 10kg size, while there will be an im­mi­nent price re­duc­tion on it range of 45 kg prod­ucts.

A day lat­er, flour com­pa­ny Sheik Lisha Ltd con­firmed that it would be re­duc­ing its prod­ucts by 10 per cent next week while Na­tion­al Flour Mills chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Ian Mitchell said the state-owned com­pa­ny had been mulling over a price re­duc­tion that would en­sure sta­bil­i­ty for cus­tomers.

On Wednes­day, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon urged and ex­pect­ed more com­pa­nies to fol­low the lead of Nu­trim­ix as her min­istry had seen a con­sis­tent de­cline in the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion (FAO) of the Unit­ed Na­tions’ bench­mark in­dex of in­ter­na­tion­al food com­mod­i­ty prices.

On Fri­day, the FAO pub­lished its Food Price In­dex for June 2023, which in­di­cat­ed that glob­al prices for ce­re­als had de­clined by 23.87 per cent be­tween June 2022 and June 2023.

The FAO Ce­re­als Price In­dex com­pris­es glob­al prices for wheat, maize, sorghum and rice.

The FAO’s Food Price In­dex–which mea­sures price move­ments in five com­mod­i­ty groups com­pris­ing meat, dairy, ce­re­als veg­etable oils and sug­ar–de­clined by 20.94 per cent be­tween June 2022 and June 2023.

How­ev­er the FAO warned that high food prices had wors­ened the food sit­u­a­tion in vul­ner­a­ble coun­tries as it not­ed, “High food prices, eco­nom­ic down­turns, con­flict, droughts and the im­pend­ing risk of El Niño weath­er pat­terns in sev­er­al re­gions are ag­gra­vat­ing food se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns in many parts of the world.”