A Kremandala team – YaYa Marin-Coleman and Adele Ramos, went out shopping this afternoon for flour, and shop after shop we were told that there was none to sell. Some stores said they had run out since Monday; others told us that they had not had flour in supply for three whole weeks.
And when we finally found flour, it was all the way downtown at Public’s Supermarket. The store was just receiving one hundred 50-pound sacks of flour, and customers had to wait until all the flour was offloaded to purchase their supplies. But when they began making their orders, customers were told that they could get a maximum of 5 pounds. What’s the price? One woman asked. The response was – 99 cents a pound.
Before we left from behind “the zinc fence,” we printed off a copy of the controlled price list released by the Government on April 14, 2008, and, on the authority of those numbers, we insisted that the controlled price for flour is 84 cents retail. We questioned why we were being charged 99 cents a pound, and we were advised that we needed to speak with the store’s manager, Raju Vanjani.
How can we sell flour for 84 cents a pound when they sell us for 85 cents a pound? the businessman questioned. He added that he was not even aware of any controlled price in effect for flour. They do know that rice should be sold at $1.31 a pound, but they got no such information about flour prices, Vanjani told us.
He offered to show us his receipt, which he got from Belize Mills, and indeed, it listed his purchase of La Gitana flour at $42.50 for a 50-pound sack – which works out to exactly 85 cents a pound. He told us that they have to pay 13 cents a sack as freight charge to Belize Mills for delivering the flour, and by the time he deducts his expenses for labor and packaging, he is not left with much for his own business. As for rice, the businessman claims that the margin of $5 a sack leaves him with virtually nothing after expenses.
Indeed, the deeper issue behind today’s flour crisis is not just that supplies are scant – but also that merchants and producers are absolutely not happy about the existing controlled prices, and are evidently not honoring them.
We tried to get a sense of why Belize Mills is selling flour for 85 cents a pound to merchants – which would mean that there is no way they could sell for the controlled price, and we were advised that Government only controls the price of the 100-pound sack – not the 50-pound sack Belize Mills recently started selling. The SI, we were told, does not place any price restriction on 25- and 50-pound sacks.
We understand that there is a lobby by the private sector to get government to increase the controlled price of flour, and it is obvious that Government is not enforcing the controlled price structure, because every day many merchants are getting way with selling flour for substantially more than the legal price. In fact, one store was forcing customers to purchase $5 worth of goods before they could get their 5-pound ration at $1.00 a pound.
It is a matter we intend to take up with authorities in the days ahead, but we were unable to contact them this evening due the lateness of our reports.
When we drove by Belize Mills just before 5 this evening, we observed a fresh shipment of wheat which arrived via trucks from Guatemala this morning. They were offloading into the Mills’ 4,000 metric ton storage tank system. The company projects that supplies should be back on track some time next week.
This evening at about 6:00 p.m., two little boys walking on Racecourse Street were carrying only two-pound bags of flour they purchased at a neighborhood store. Some customers told Kremandala’s YaYa Marin Coleman this evening that even with the price of flour as high as it is today, they prefer to still purchase it and make their Belizean favorites – tortillas, Johnny cakes, and fried jacks – because the price of bread, which recently increased by 25 cents on the loaf, is putting a dent in their pockets.