KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

While some bak­eries, roti shops and dou­bles ven­dors are un­will­ing to low­er their food prices af­ter three ma­jor flour pro­duc­ers cut the cost of flour, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is ques­tion­ing their rea­son­ing.

Re­spond­ing to a Guardian Me­dia ar­ti­cle where busi­ness own­ers said the de­crease was not enough to al­low them to drop the prices of bread, pas­tries and In­do-Trinida­di­an del­i­ca­cies, Row­ley asked, “So a high­er flour price was enough to see an in­stant rise in the price of bread but a low­er flour price is not enough to low­er the price of dou­bles and bread?”

Row­ley post­ed this ques­tion on his Face­book time­line with a pho­to­graph of the ar­ti­cle. There were some mixed re­views. Some agreed with his con­cern, while oth­ers ex­pressed that Gov­ern­ment had no price con­trol. One com­menter ques­tioned why fu­el prices did not de­crease when oil prices de­clined.

Flour pro­duc­ers in­creased their prices a year ago as freight costs soared dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, and the avail­abil­i­ty of wheat be­came a con­cern as the Rus­sia/Ukraine war raged on. It led to restau­rants and eater­ies in­creas­ing their prices. In the ar­ti­cle, Puff ‘N Stuff own­er Gre­go­ry Laing ex­plained that bak­eries had to pay more for fu­el, but­ter, cook­ing oil, pack­ag­ing, and re­pairs and main­te­nance ser­vices. Laing said the price de­creas­es were not sig­nif­i­cant enough to ri­val the 40-65 per cent in­crease in raw ma­te­r­i­al costs bak­eries en­dured over the last three years. Dou­bles ven­dors in Debe and Pe­nal had sim­i­lar re­spons­es.

But speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce Ki­ran Singh said pro­duc­ers low­er­ing flour prices was a step in the right di­rec­tion as it should ben­e­fit con­sumers.

How­ev­er, Singh said they have not yet seen the new prices on the su­per­mar­ket shelves. He said with the pan­dem­ic over, there are sig­nif­i­cant de­creas­es in ship­ping costs. There­fore, Singh said he ex­pect­ed the prices of all im­ports to de­crease. He em­pathised with food busi­ness­es, say­ing that the cham­ber ex­pect­ed a larg­er de­crease in the re­tail price of flour.

Mean­while, the cost of cook­ing oil re­mains high.

“We were ex­pect­ing to see a gen­er­al de­crease in every­thing that we im­port be­cause if the ship­ping cost went back down to $3000-$5000 av­er­age on a con­tain­er when it was close to $15,000 some time ago, we should au­to­mat­i­cal­ly see a de­crease in food items, hard­ware and every­thing we im­port, even ve­hi­cles. We are see­ing the op­po­site where prices have re­mained at the high­er plateau, and we are not see­ing a re­duc­tion in the prices. It is very wor­ry­ing for the con­sumer,” Singh said.

As for bak­eries and dou­bles ven­dors re­duc­ing prices, Singh said while peo­ple be­lieve busi­ness­es should do so, oth­er in­gre­di­ents be­sides flour re­cent­ly in­creased.

He said the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try should meet with pro­duc­ers, im­porters and busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tions to dis­cuss why there is no re­duc­tion in food items, giv­en low­er ship­ping costs.