Shoppers want relief on grocery items in Budget

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

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Four months in­to mar­ried life, banker Sha­keem Williams, 26, al­ready runs his house­hold like a bal­ance sheet. Ra­tions for two cost him at least $3,000 a month, a bill he finds steep. And he knows what comes next: each child, he spec­u­lates, will add at least $2,000 on top.

Cook­ing at home was sup­posed to be the pen­ny­wise route, but Williams says the math doesn’t sup­port that.

“Even though peo­ple would say it’s cheap­er to cook than eat­ing out, the way that gro­ceries rise is about the same,” Williams told Guardian Me­dia as he pre­pares to see what to­day’s Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion will of­fer.

He and his wife now split the shop­ping, one for pro­duce and an­oth­er for meat, be­cause prices vary wide­ly from store to store.

He wants tighter price con­trols, not­ing that even when the econ­o­my im­proves, shelf prices nev­er seem to fall while salaries lag. He would wel­come an agency to po­lice them.

Last Oc­to­ber, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo re­moved VAT from 16 cat­e­gories of food items in­clud­ing ta­ble salt, mau­by, soy sauce, co­conut wa­ter, cakes and muffins, and lo­cal­ly grown pump­kin, wa­ter­mel­on, cu­cum­ber, let­tuce and toma­toes. He called it a short-term fix for food af­ford­abil­i­ty. Many sta­ples were al­ready ze­ro-rat­ed, while every­thing else still car­ries 12.5 per cent VAT.

The shop­pers in­ter­viewed in San Fer­nan­do named no par­tic­u­lar items for the chop. What they want is across-the-board re­lief, es­pe­cial­ly on food.

For Mar­tin Fran­cis, 39, of Va­len­cia, the squeeze is mea­sured in boys. A con­trac­tor and Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Caribbean stu­dent, he feeds a house­hold of six, in­clud­ing four sons aged 13, ten, five and three, whose ap­petites out­run the bud­get. The month­ly gro­cery run costs about $3,000; add the mar­ket and top-ups, and it reach­es at least $4,500, with rough­ly $1,200 more for gas. He spared a thought for those work­ing with a $20.50 hourly min­i­mum wage, say­ing it is a heavy load.

Fran­cis is not wait­ing on to­day to res­cue him. By his own ac­count, he is a hus­tler, pick­ing up pas­sen­gers on the road to cov­er his gas bill.

“Any job I can take, I find an ex­tra job.”

He said he stays mel­low, prays and trusts God for next month.

Cher­ry Ho­sein, 70, of Princes Town, shops month­ly for a house­hold of four adults and buys in bulk when she can, spend­ing $2,000 to $2,500. Cook­ing oil is her yard­stick.

“For ex­am­ple, the two gal­lons of Nar­iel oil, I used to buy that two years ago for $100. That is $212 at this present mo­ment,” Ho­sein said.

Her wish list is short: “Ba­sic food items, that should be re­al­ly af­ford­able, and the price should be down, be­cause we have to sur­vive, and we need the ba­sic items most of all.”

Asked whether the Gov­ern­ment should al­so re­assess cus­toms du­ties and tax­es on food im­ports, her an­swer was a quick, “Of course.”

Bulk buy­ing, Ho­sein con­cedes, is out of reach for many, in­clud­ing some of her friends. Her ad­vice to them is to stock on­ly what the kitchen us­es, ad­vice she says she fol­lows her­self.

Williams, mean­while, has mod­est hopes. He on­ly be­gan fol­low­ing bud­gets last year and can­not put a fig­ure on the re­lief he wants, on­ly that he wants to see im­prove­ment. What mat­ters to him is who the bud­get is for.

“I want to see what is put for­ward, es­pe­cial­ly for the young peo­ple, be­cause my dad used to tell me the bud­get is not for him; it’s for the next gen­er­a­tion com­ing up.”