Rising food prices are Sri Lankans’ biggest worry

By Sanath Nanayakkare

A middle class mother walked into a grocery shop in Mattegoda yesterday with her two school-going children and asked for two chocolate flavoured milk packets, one packet of Tipi Tip, a medium sized canned fish and 500g of dhal and paid Rs. 1,559 for the damage without batting an eyelid. It was evident that she was too aware of the latest World Bank assessment which places Sri Lanka at No.5 among countries hardest hit by food price inflation.

As her kids start drinking the milk, she looked around with grave concern and anxiously said,” Will these increasing food prices ever drop? In our country, prices go up but never come down.”

Renuka Samantha Kumara and his wife Nilanthi Kuruppu – the owners of the retail outlet replied, “We can’t give you a straight answer on when food prices will come down, but prices have to come down soon because customers aren’t able to pay high grocery bills and traders also can’t pay suppliers’ eye-popping bill amounts. Customers see stars when they are told how much their bill comes to, and we’re shocked when our suppliers hand us the invoice for stock replenishments. So both consumers and traders are equally left wondering when the prices are going to come down.”

Later the family traders speaking to The Island said, “In our view, food prices have to go down by 40-50% in the near term for low and middle income households if they are to survive. Our customers fall into these two categories and they have no savings to dip into. What they do is cut down, cut down and cut down on their purchases. Our customers from low-income households have almost disappeared. Employees of the State sector and permanent employees of the private sector still have some capacity to buy at least part of what they used to buy before the high inflation hit. Some of them have told us that they can’t do anything else with their money but pay for food and monthly utility bills. Sad to say that daily wage earners who get only 2-3 days of work per week don’t show up to buy anything. We don’t know what they are eating.”

“Today we bought eggs at the price of Rs. 52 each and sell at Rs. 54 with a Rs. 2 margin, so we have to sell 52 eggs to earn the profit to take home two eggs for consumption without losing the capital we invested on eggs. These days customers avoid eggs like the plague because of its all-time high price, so we don’t know how long it will take to sell 52 eggs. Prices of fresh vegetables, fruits and discretional items such as biscuits, ice-cream, soap, toothpaste have hit through the roof and out of reach of the customers. Both consumers and shopkeepers are trading down because of unbearable price points. If there’s another wave of food price hikes due to increased fuel prices, rupee depreciation, supply chain disruptions, or some policy decision on the Pettah Market, consumers won’t be able to patronize our shop at all, and that will deal a great blow to our business. The government says that it will provide relief to low-income earners at the forthcoming budget to cushion against such vulnerabilities. That will be fine as an immediate option, but it will only be a stopgap to the problem. We believe that the real ‘social safety net ‘needs to come through private sector investments, a boom in infrastructure spending and a growing economy that works better for everybody from top to bottom. The government should give the vulnerable sections a fishing rod and not a fish,” they said.