Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

T&T could be fac­ing food short­ages and high­er food prices over the next few months.

Flour, veg­etable oil, peas and some types of meats are some of the prod­ucts that the coun­try could face pos­si­ble short­ages of.

Mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty who spoke to the Guardian Me­dia at­trib­uted these like­ly short­ages and high­er prices to the con­flict in Ukraine and oth­er fac­tors like a lack of ac­cess to for­eign ex­change.

A me­dia re­lease from the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions in T&T on Fri­day warned T&T and coun­tries world­wide to brace for high­er food prices.

“The glob­al food im­port bill is on course to hit a new record of US$1.8 tril­lion this year, but high­er prices and trans­port costs rather than vol­umes ac­count for the bulk of the ex­pect­ed in­crease,” the re­lease said.

In a news­pa­per ad on Thurs­day, Sheik Lisha Ltd based in Cunu­pia apol­o­gised for short­ages of prod­ucts such as flour, pa­per bags and plas­tic bags which they blamed on the Russ­ian/Ukraine war.

The com­pa­ny man­u­fac­tures pa­per bags, plas­tic bags, garbage bags, split peas pow­der, parched parsad flour, all-pur­pose and whole wheat flour.

“De­lays in ship­ments, de­crease of raw ma­te­ri­als, short­age of for­eign cur­ren­cy, are some of the fac­tors af­fect­ing us. We would like to re­as­sure you that we are do­ing our best to solve this is­sue,” the ad said.

Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Sheik Lisha, Azad Akaloo told Guardian Me­dia that Sheik Lisha im­ports its flour di­rect­ly from Turkey and apart from ris­ing glob­al prices the on­go­ing war be­tween Ukraine and Rus­sia has al­so been di­rect­ly im­pact­ing sup­plies.

“You are pay­ing mon­ey and wait­ing and the ship comes when it wants. That is the big thing and there is no­body you can com­plain to about that.”

Lo­gis­ti­cal prob­lem

Com­ment­ing on the like­li­hood of wide­spread short­ages and on the news­pa­per ad, Pres­i­dent of the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT) Ra­jiv Diptee told Guardian Me­dia that the ad clear­ly shows that there are lo­gis­ti­cal prob­lems which ex­ist in the coun­try in terms of im­port­ing and pro­duc­ing food.

Apart from con­firm­ing that short­ages in prod­ucts like flour are a pos­si­bil­i­ty, Diptee al­so ex­pects food prices to rise.

He said veg­etable oil, meats and ce­re­als are items in the su­per­mar­ket which could see high­er prices while there could be pos­si­ble short­ages of flour be­cause of the prob­lems of wheat in in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

He blames glob­al short­ages and ris­ing food prices on in­ter­na­tion­al fac­tors.

“Con­tain­er ship­ping costs were al­ready spi­ralling dur­ing the height of the pan­dem­ic and pres­sures are be­ing felt more acute­ly due to the Russ­ian in­va­sion of Ukraine. Al­so, due to the con­flict, com­modi­ties such as grain, bar­ley and sun­flower oil are fac­ing steep price in­creas­es and short­ages in some in­stances. When we con­sid­er agri­cul­tur­al in­puts for pro­duc­tion, the ris­ing cost of fer­til­iz­er and fu­el present the biggest ob­sta­cles to sus­tain­able pro­grammes and the bloat­ed im­pact on the food im­port bill. We’ve seen this af­fect the out­put of poul­try and egg pro­duc­tion for ex­am­ple.”

The age-old prob­lem of lack of ac­cess to for­eign ex­change is com­pli­cat­ed by the fact that im­port­ed goods are al­so be­ing fetched at high­er prices, he added.

“It cre­ates a sit­u­a­tion where we are spend­ing more for­eign cur­ren­cy not to buy more vol­umes but the same or low­er amounts of food. It al­so puts an em­pha­sis on­to what we are im­port­ing at the price points we are able to be­cause prod­uct sub­sti­tu­tion may sim­ply be more at­trac­tive with a lim­it­ed pool of for­eign ex­change. This will place pres­sures on some dis­trib­u­tors who may have to piv­ot as a re­sult.”

Diptee ex­pects the sit­u­a­tion to get worse be­fore it gets bet­ter as he ar­gues that there needs to be a change in con­sumer be­hav­iour.

“We need to have an in­formed con­sumer which means work­ing close­ly to ed­u­cate con­sumers on the ben­e­fits of mod­i­fy­ing di­ets. You al­so need to have great prod­uct al­ter­na­tives that com­ple­ment taste pro­files and sat­is­fac­tion. We are not go­ing to see that hap­pen­ing in the short term in T&T so the ex­pec­ta­tion where food prices con­tin­ue to in­crease will force a pat­tern where it be­comes a ques­tion of price sen­si­tiv­i­ty.”

Pres­i­dent of the Food Dis­trib­u­tors As­so­ci­a­tion Ger­ard Cony­ers told Guardian Me­dia that the coun­try can ex­pect “pock­ets of short­ages.”

“It all de­pends now which com­pa­ny gets the sup­ply from what part of the world. It de­pends on the com­mod­i­ty too. For ex­am­ple, In­dia just stopped ex­port­ing sug­ar. As the coun­try does this, it would af­fect cer­tain sup­plies to T&T. It all de­pends on the com­mod­i­ty and what you are get­ting from which coun­try. So if you have tra­di­tion­al­ly been im­port­ing from In­dia and that coun­try is not ex­port­ing then you will have to look for sug­ar some­where else. But al­so it does not mean that par­tic­u­lar prod­uct will dry up com­plete­ly as there are oth­er sources in the world.”

Apart from sug­ar, he said any­thing that is a by-prod­uct of wheat such as flour could see pos­si­ble short­ages be­cause both Rus­sia and Ukraine are ma­jor pro­duc­ers of wheat.

CEO of Ma­haraj West­side Su­per­mar­ket and Jum­bo Foods Ku­mar Ma­haraj who is al­so an im­porter is al­so ex­pect­ing short­ages of some prod­ucts based on the chal­lenges in do­ing in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness.

“Be­cause of the pan­dem­ic and the sit­u­a­tion in Ukraine, the hard­est thing is to get raw ma­te­ri­als. Even when you ac­quire raw ma­te­ri­als like wheat, the next prob­lem is to get a con­tin­uer to load it. Hav­ing got­ten that con­tain­er, the next prob­lem is to get it on a ship. These prob­lems are now start­ing to show their heads. The worse is yet to come. Every com­pa­ny which im­ports or brings in raw ma­te­ri­als will ex­pe­ri­ence some type of short­age, whether it is raw ma­te­ri­als or fin­ished prod­ucts.”

Some of the short­ages that con­sumers in T&T could ex­pe­ri­ence in­clude peas and meat prod­ucts, he said.

“We are start­ing to have prob­lems with peas and beans. We have no guar­an­tee for meat over the next few months. I am one of the biggest im­porters of meat in this coun­try. You can’t sim­ply open a fac­to­ry and make goat meat or beef. Coun­tries who nev­er bought meat are now do­ing so. A lot of coun­tries who are ma­jor pro­duc­ers are now with­hold­ing those prod­ucts.”

Giv­en these chal­lenges, he ex­pects food prices to con­tin­ue to rise.

“Every Mon­day morn­ing I get let­ters from sup­pli­ers with rise is prices and they are say­ing it’s be­cause of the in­crease cost in trans­porta­tion and oth­er fac­tors. T&T will have to get ac­cus­tomed to that. I ex­pect this to con­tin­ue to the end of 2022.”

Poul­try in­creas­es

Pres­i­dent of the Poul­try As­so­ci­a­tion Robin Phillips does not ex­pect the price of chick­en to fall in the near fu­ture.

“The poul­try in­dus­try faces a lot of chal­lenges like sup­ply chain is­sues. In terms of prices, they seem to be sta­bilised for now but they have sta­bilised at the high lev­el un­for­tu­nate­ly. We see lit­tle op­por­tu­ni­ty for the down­ward side of the in­put costs sim­ply be­cause of what is tak­ing place in Ukraine and Rus­sia. They are large-scale sup­pli­ers of grain, wheat and corn.”

Speak­ing in his next role as the Mar­ket­ing Man­ag­er of Arawak, he said they had no oth­er choice to raise prices ear­li­er this year.

“At the lev­el of the Poul­try As­so­ci­a­tion we don’t dis­cuss prices but Arawak made an ad­just­ment in prices at the end of April. It was a five per cent ad­just­ment. It called for more than that but we felt we had to keep chick­en af­ford­able. How­ev­er, right now we don’t see any need for fur­ther price ad­just­ment.”

He re­mains hope­ful that once the sit­u­a­tion sta­bilis­es in Ukraine there would be a down­ward trend in prices.

Kumar Maharaj, CEO, Westside Supermarket

Gov­ern­ment’s view

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon in a What­sapp mes­sage told Guardian Me­dia that there is no need to gen­er­alise and say that there are food and oth­er prod­uct short­ages as Sheik Lisha is a well-known im­porter and their sit­u­a­tion does not nec­es­sar­i­ly re­flect oth­er busi­ness­es in the coun­try.

“There are no is­sues of avail­abil­i­ty at this time. Sheik Lisha is known to be one of many im­porters and one should not gen­er­alise based on a sin­gle state­ment. There are known lo­cal pro­duc­ers of flour and no is­sue of avail­abil­i­ty has arisen.”

Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon told Guardian Me­dia that it is not on­ly T&T but food short­ages are loom­ing glob­al­ly.

“The world is now faced with dan­ger­ous food short­ages and like many oth­er emerg­ing economies, we are at risk of acute food in­se­cu­ri­ty. Our food im­port bill will cer­tain­ly be high­er than pre­vi­ous years, not be­cause we are im­port­ing more food, but be­cause glob­al prices are at an all-time high, in­creas­ing by over 60 per cent from 2020 to May 2022. In this time, glob­al prices of dairy, meat, veg­etable oil, ce­re­als and sug­ar in­creased by 40%, 28 per cent, 131 per cent, 68 per cent and 51 per cent re­spec­tive­ly. It is now ex­pect­ed that due to these high prices, food im­ports in­ter­na­tion­al­ly will like­ly to­tal $1.81 tril­lion this year, ex­ceed­ing an all-time high set last year by $51 bil­lion.”

He ex­pects this would have a neg­a­tive im­pact on the pock­ets of lo­cal con­sumers.

“Many house­holds are in a volatile po­si­tion with strained bud­gets giv­en that their spend­ing bills have in­creased for fu­el, med­ica­tion and gro­cery items, leav­ing lit­tle wig­gle room to spend on dis­cre­tionary items like fur­ni­ture, house­hold ap­pli­ances, ap­par­el, etc., es­pe­cial­ly for those that al­ready be­gan to draw down on their sav­ings to meet every­day ex­pens­es, as their salaries just isn’t ad­e­quate. The longer the Ukraine-Russ­ian con­flict en­dures will wors­en this cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis, deep­en hunger and pover­ty. This is more pro­nounced for those in the low­er-in­come brack­et, who spend up to 45 per cent of their in­come on food ex­pen­di­ture.”

He spoke about pos­si­ble so­lu­tions.

“The T&T – Guyana MOU presents favourable op­por­tu­ni­ties to help low­er our de­pen­dence on food im­ports and low­er our ex­po­sure to volatile food prices, where more of our lo­cal farm­ers should be en­cour­aged to in­vest in Guyana and ac­quire arable land, es­pe­cial­ly for pro­duc­ing crops that re­quire large acreages such as corn, cit­rus, ba­nanas, and an­i­mal farm­ing etc. Our Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture can help to fa­cil­i­tate this by ex­pand­ing their grants and ben­e­fits to lo­cal farm­ers set­ting up op­er­a­tions in Guyana while part­ner­ing with Guyana’s gov­ern­ment to pro­vide con­ces­sions to T&T farm­ers in ac­quir­ing lands for farm­ing pur­pos­es and mov­ing of agri­cul­tur­al equip­ment across to Guyana.”

Live chickens for sale at R&N Poultry and Meat Supplies, SS Erin Road, Debe.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

Su­per­mar­ket prices

S&S Per­sad Su­per­mar­ket based in Ma­yaro and Rio Claro sent Guardian Me­dia a list of prices of ba­sic prod­ucts for the first half of 2022 and com­pared them to the first half of 2021. There were sig­nif­i­cant price in­creas­es in all these ba­sic prod­ucts.

Prod­ucts Jan to June 2021 Jan to June 2022

Hap­pi Brown Rice 8kg $82.95 $99.95

Ibis Flour 10kg $59.95 $69.95

RG Veg­etable Oil 17L $189.95 $329.95

Nes­tle Klim Pow­der Milk 360g $24.95 $34.95

Hap­pi Brown Sug­ar 1200g $17.95 $19.95

Yel­low Split Peas 800g $7.95 $11.95

Swiss Mac­a­roni $9.95 $11.95

Cheese Per Lb $24.95/lb $31.95/lb

Cook’s Mate Rolled Oats 454g $6.95 $8.95

Brunswick Tu­na In Oil 142g $11.95 $12.95