One year on: grocery prices show minimal movement

Jesse Ramdeo 

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

A side-by-side com­par­i­son of a ba­sic bas­ket of gro­ceries shows that while prices have shift­ed over the past year, the over­all in­crease re­mains mar­gin­al.

A Guardian Me­dia analy­sis com­par­ing iden­ti­cal items in April 2025 and April 2026 found that the to­tal cost of the bas­ket moved from $358.47 to $362.47, an in­crease of just $4, or rough­ly one per cent. The com­par­i­son, con­duct­ed us­ing the same brands and quan­ti­ties, high­lights a mixed pic­ture at the check­out.

Last Oc­to­ber, the UNC gov­ern­ment, in its first bud­get, an­nounced the re­moval of Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) from sev­er­al food items to re­duce the cost of liv­ing. Among the ze­ro-rat­ed items were lo­cal pro­duce, ta­ble salt, co­coa prod­ucts, and var­i­ous condi­ments.

Some items record­ed no­tice­able in­creas­es. The price of flour climbed from $12.99 to $15.99, while cheese rose by five dol­lars. But these in­creas­es were off­set by de­clines in oth­er ar­eas, with cook­ing oil drop­ping from $21.99 to $18.99 and salt falling by $1.

Mean­while, sev­er­al sta­ple items re­mained un­changed, in­clud­ing rice, bread, eggs, milk, sug­ar and chick­en.

Pres­i­dent of the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SATT), Bion­di Bachew, says the over­all move­ment is con­sis­tent with broad­er eco­nom­ic trends.

“As shown in the bas­ket of goods, the in­crease in over­all cost rep­re­sents about a one per cent rise, which is in line with na­tion­al in­fla­tion da­ta,” he said.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Bachew stressed that the changes are not across the board, not­ing that in­di­vid­ual prod­ucts are dri­ving the shifts.

“It isn’t a blan­ket rise. It’s be­ing led by spe­cif­ic prod­ucts with­in the group­ing that have their own sup­ply chains and in­put cost pres­sures,” he ex­plained.

He al­so point­ed to a no­tice­able shift in con­sumer be­hav­iour, with shop­pers be­com­ing more price-con­scious.

“We have seen a re­duc­tion in brand loy­al­ty over the last decade, with more op­tions now avail­able lo­cal­ly and from abroad. Con­sumers are switch­ing based on price sen­si­tiv­i­ty, recog­nis­ing that many of these prod­ucts of­fer sim­i­lar qual­i­ty to what they tra­di­tion­al­ly pur­chased,” Bachew added.

De­spite some fluc­tu­a­tions, the find­ings sug­gest that while gro­cery prices have not spiked dra­mat­i­cal­ly over the past year, mean­ing­ful re­lief at the check­out re­mains lim­it­ed.

For many con­sumers, the cost of liv­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly food prices, con­tin­ues to be a key con­cern one year af­ter the change in gov­ern­ment.

Ear­li­er this month, Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram raised se­ri­ous con­cerns about the state of the sec­tor, warn­ing that bil­lions of dol­lars have been drain­ing from Trinidad and To­ba­go’s econ­o­my fol­low­ing years of de­cline in agri­cul­ture.

He not­ed that the gov­ern­ment was mov­ing to re­verse that trend by boost­ing lo­cal pro­duc­tion and cut­ting back on im­ports.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia about food se­cu­ri­ty, Min­is­ter Rati­ram not­ed that ef­forts are un­der­way to ad­dress food prices by strength­en­ing do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion and sup­port­ing farm­ers.

“The Min­istry has in­ten­si­fied di­rect en­gage­ment with farm­ers na­tion­wide. Through com­mu­ni­ty vis­its, con­sul­ta­tions, and stake­hold­er meet­ings, there’ve been col­lab­o­ra­tive and re­spon­sive ap­proach­es, en­sur­ing that farm­ers’ con­cerns are ad­dressed prompt­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly.”

He out­lined a se­ries of mea­sures aimed at sta­bil­is­ing prices, in­clud­ing ex­pand­ed farmer en­gage­ment, in­creased ac­cess to agri­cul­tur­al in­puts, and new crop pro­duc­tion ini­tia­tives.

“In 2026, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 35 agri­cul­tur­al train­ing pro­grammes will be rolled out, ben­e­fit­ing an es­ti­mat­ed 20,000 par­tic­i­pants. These pro­grammes are de­signed to equip farm­ers, youth, and agri-en­tre­pre­neurs with mod­ern tech­niques and tech­nolo­gies to im­prove pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, re­silience, and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. The Min­istry has al­so ex­pand­ed sup­port through the dis­tri­b­u­tion of crit­i­cal agri­cul­tur­al in­puts, in­clud­ing cer­ti­fied seeds and plant­i­ng ma­te­ri­als.”

Rati­ram said these ini­tia­tives are part of a broad­er strat­e­gy to re­duce re­liance on im­ports and in­crease the avail­abil­i­ty of af­ford­able, lo­cal­ly pro­duced food.

He al­so point­ed to re­cent in­ter­ven­tion in the rice in­dus­try, where ac­tion was tak­en to re­verse pro­posed price re­duc­tions to en­sure farm­ers re­main vi­able and pro­duc­tion is sus­tained.

The min­is­ter main­tained that boost­ing lo­cal agri­cul­ture is key to long-term price sta­bil­i­ty.

“The Min­istry is ad­vanc­ing long-term de­vel­op­ment through strate­gic part­ner­ships, in­no­va­tion, and in­vest­ments in agro-pro­cess­ing and val­ue chains. These ef­forts aim to mod­ernise the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor, re­duce post-har­vest loss­es, and in­crease the avail­abil­i­ty of af­ford­able, lo­cal­ly pro­duced food.”