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Monday, July 14, 2025

Stretching your food dollars during the pandemic

by

Charles Kong Soo
1620 days ago
20210207

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has im­pact­ed al­most every facet of life. Cit­i­zens have to pri­ori­tise their fi­nan­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ties such as rent, util­i­ties, med­i­cine, it can be es­pe­cial­ly fi­nan­cial­ly chal­leng­ing for house­holds with lim­it­ed food dol­lars.

The sit­u­a­tion be­comes more acute with many peo­ple thrown on the bread­line or their in­come has been dras­ti­cal­ly re­duced.

Sun­day Guardian asked home­own­ers and su­per­mar­kets for tips how con­sumers can stretch their dol­lars when shop­ping for food dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

Since VAT is now ap­plied to so-called lux­u­ry foods such as grapes, ap­ples and cham­pagne, sev­er­al su­per­mar­kets were asked what were they do­ing to help their cus­tomers with ini­tia­tives such as dis­counts, deals, band­ed of­fers, four items for $20 and oth­er in­cen­tives.

Kay Milling­ton, a moth­er of four chil­dren, and grand­moth­er of eight, from San­ta Cruz, said "You buy the ba­sic items first, like rice, flour, sug­ar, salt, milk, oil, peas, chick­en, turkey, gar­lic, onion, and veg­eta­bles.

"You can al­so look for deals and buy in bulk and put down for the rainy day."

Rox­an­na Ha­stick, a moth­er of six, from Bel­mont, said "I try as much as pos­si­ble to get as much as I can at the Port-of-Spain mar­ket. I avoid many no-name prod­ucts be­cause I end up us­ing more; laun­dry de­ter­gent is a re­al­ly good ex­am­ple. With some brands of rice, I boil two cups to feed my fam­i­ly one meal, but oth­er brands I need to use three cups.

"Im­pulse buy­ing is the kryp­tonite of any bud­get. Make a list days in ad­vance of re­ceiv­ing mon­ey. Re­vise the list at least 48 hours lat­er then stick to it."

•Agri­cul­tur­al econ­o­mist Omar­dath Ma­haraj said T&T im­port­ed US$15.45 mil­lion in ox­tails be­tween 2012 and 2016. He said in Ja­maica, while this prod­uct was a high-val­ued del­i­ca­cy for gen­er­a­tions, they were shift­ing to low-val­ued stewed turkey necks al­so re­ferred to as 'ghet­to-style ox­tail' as a sub­sti­tute.

Ma­haraj said the same sub­sti­tu­tion can be ex­pect­ed here in T&T as the coun­try faced ris­ing food prices and for­eign ex­change pres­sure which strained its ca­pac­i­ty and de­pen­den­cy on im­port­ed food.

He said T&T should be ac­tive­ly work­ing to­wards de­vel­op­ing its na­tion­al herds of do­mes­tic cat­tle such as bi­son and buf­fa­lyp­so in­clud­ing the farm­ers who re­main in pro­duc­tion.

•Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT) Pres­i­dent Ra­jiv Diptee said where pos­si­ble for deals and bar­gains, it was a chal­leng­ing time. He said, how­ev­er, cus­tomers can look for­ward to the kind of deals in 2021 that they saw at year-end 2020 dur­ing the course of the year, notwith­stand­ing the peaks and troughs of sea­son­al pe­ri­ods as well as de­mand and sup­ply.

Diptee said chal­lenges ex­ist­ed for for­eign ex­change and will con­tin­ue to do so. There was a huge dis­cus­sion that re­quired na­tion­al in­ter­ven­tion to en­sure that food se­cu­ri­ty re­mained a fore­most para­mount con­cern.

He said the coun­try must pri­ori­tise food se­cu­ri­ty in the na­tion­al agen­da as well as re­turn fo­cused agri­cul­tur­al ini­tia­tives to the fore­front.

•A rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Tru Valu Su­per­mar­ket said it cur­rent­ly had Get You to Pay­Day spe­cials de­signed to keep pantry es­sen­tials stocked at a rea­son­able price for fam­i­lies at this time and ran every Jan­u­ary af­ter Christ­mas.

•CEO ADM Dis­trib­u­tors Ltd and for­mer SATT pres­i­dent Bal­li­ram Ma­haraj said with T&T's for­eign ex­change re­serves de­creas­ing to US $7140.40 mil­lion in No­vem­ber 2020 from US $7167.50 mil­lion in Oc­to­ber 2020, the coun­try was in se­ri­ous trou­ble if the Gov­ern­ment didn't take dras­tic ac­tion to con­trol its forex.

He said if the coun­try didn't pro­ceed with cau­tion it could run in­to deep trou­ble with food sup­plies and per­haps a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion like Venezuela.

Ma­haraj said he will sup­port the idea to use heavy tax­es on lux­u­ry items, in ad­di­tion to putting some of that mon­ey in a fund to use for tech­nol­o­gy for grow­ing the coun­try's own food, train­ing peo­ple in food pro­duc­tion plus a por­tion for the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and farm­ers.

He said the cur­rent du­ty on frozen french fries should be raised from five per cent to 50 per cent to en­cour­age the lo­cal con­sump­tion of cas­sa­va fries, its cul­ti­va­tion, as well as lo­cal plan­tain and pota­to chips and oth­er prod­ucts that can be grown lo­cal­ly.

•Shara Solomon, Re­la­tion­ship Man­ag­er, Magna Re­wards (Trinidad) Ltd said Magna pro­vid­ed a plat­form for its val­ued mer­chants to re­ward cus­tomers with points when they swipe their card for a trans­ac­tion.

She said hold­ers of a Magna Re­wards card earn points every time they use their card. Up­on check­out, Magna mer­chants award cus­tomers a per­cent­age of their to­tal bill as Magna points.

Solomon said these points have a mon­e­tary val­ue which can be ac­cu­mu­lat­ed and re­deemed to­wards fu­ture pur­chas­es, re­demp­tion meant that cus­tomers used their points in­stead of cash to pur­chase items from the Magna mer­chant.

She said with Magna In­stant Re­demp­tion, cus­tomers had im­me­di­ate ac­cess to ‘ex­tra funds’ at their fin­ger­tips, cus­tomers no longer had to wait for a vouch­er in the mail, they can swipe their cards to re­deem their points or use the on­line re­demp­tion op­tion.

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