Dear Editor,
Your editorial of Saturday Feb 5, 2022 was most useful, for it enables the ordinary Guyanese to plot a way forward out of the current high cost of living. The prices are correct for the things a companion and I bought that very morning at Bourda market. Plantains have been $260/lb for 3 weeks now, which is more than the $200 your housewife says. A drinking coconut is now $240, up from $200 last year, when the market vendors had to make a decision to up the prices because of the sudden scarcity caused by their usual suppliers getting higher prices elsewhere. (Such a coconut was 10 cents in 1970, 25 cents in 1980, $20 in 1990, $40 in 2000, and $160 in 2020 at the same vendors.
I think the foreign offshore and onshore food supply problem is even bigger than you think. The very good DDL Topco unsweetened orange juice began to rightly outsell the foreign brands, $300 to $500. But they all disappeared from the supermarket shelves two weeks before Christmas and have not returned up to now! So our oranges are also being bought up, and are now more costly for locals who don’t work for the foreign
companies. Let’s hope that the new prices will inspire people to grow their own food, turn more to agriculture, and become the ‘breadbasket of the Caribbean’ under their own steam (rather than political urgings) when the oil runs out.
Sincerely,
Alfred Bhulai
