Gail Alexan­der

There has been a de­cline in the lev­el of some food im­ports in­to T&T due to in­creased lo­cal pro­duc­tion.

Plus cer­tain pos­i­tive signs are emerg­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, which give some hope that food prices may be­gin to sta­bilise.

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon stat­ed this in Tues­day’s 2023 Bud­get de­bate in Par­lia­ment.

Gopee-Scoon said, ”It’s a fact that both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, food prices have sig­nif­i­cant­ly risen as a re­sult of the pan­dem­ic and the on­go­ing con­flict in Ukraine, high en­er­gy prices and ex­treme weath­er based on cli­mate change – and it is dif­fi­cult! We share the pain of those at the low­er end of the spec­trum, suf­fer­ing as a re­sult of high food prices and in­fla­tion.”

She added: “This Gov­ern­ment has sought to mit­i­gate the full im­pact of im­port­ed in­fla­tion, as best as it could, as most of the prod­ucts we con­sume are im­port­ed.

“And this is amidst a host of in­cen­tives and op­por­tu­ni­ties to en­cour­age in­creased food pro­duc­tion. But we can­not overem­pha­sise the im­por­tance of grow­ing our own food com­mer­cial­ly and in­di­vid­u­al­ly.”

Gopee-Scoon said the Food Im­port Bill isn’t a “pret­ty sight.” While in 2019 it was $5.69 bil­lion, it was $6.03 bil­lion in 2021. The high­er fig­ure was at­trib­uted to glob­al in­fla­tion.

“Still, these fig­ures are too high and the work re­mains ours, trade, agri­cul­ture, the in­di­vid­ual - we have to grow our own food,” she said.

Gopee-Scoon added, “Notwith­stand­ing, I wish to point out that as a re­sult of the sup­port pro­vid­ed by this Gov­ern­ment to the man­u­fac­tur­ers/ pro­duc­ers, food and bev­er­age sec­tor, and the in­creased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of some of our lo­cal firms, we’ve ac­tu­al­ly ex­pe­ri­enced de­clines in the quan­tum of par­tic­u­lar im­ports.”

No­table de­creas­es in food im­ports be­tween Jan­u­ary to Au­gust 2021 com­pared to Jan­u­ary to Au­gust 2022 in­clud­ed ce­re­al and ce­re­al prepa­ra­tions (Pas­ta), which de­clined by 6.9 per cent due to con­sumers choos­ing lo­cal­ly Al­so de­clin­ing by 10.9 per cent were pre­pared foods (e.g. corn flakes) and yo­gurt by 6.7 per cent.

”Those are en­cour­ag­ing fig­ures, I en­cour­age peo­ple to buy lo­cal where pos­si­ble,” she said.

Gopee-Scoon said food and bev­er­age out­put in 2022 was the high­est it’s ever been - $8 bil­lion - tes­ti­mo­ny to the pub­lic choos­ing lo­cal prod­ucts.

She added, ”We’re see­ing some pos­i­tive signs emerg­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly which gives us some hope that food prices may be­gin to sta­bilise, how­ev­er, this is bar­ring con­tin­ued glob­al volatil­i­ty.

“Ac­cord­ing to the FAO’s Food Price In­dex (FF­PI) re­port in Au­gust 2022, the in­dex av­er­aged 138.0 points down (a 1.9 per cent de­cline) from Ju­ly 2022. This is its fifth con­sec­u­tive month­ly de­cline since April 2022 when the in­dex stood at 158.4 points. This rep­re­sents a 20.4-point de­crease to the Au­gust fig­ure of 138.0 points–the low­est in sev­en months.”