PM says Gov’t prepared to intervene as food prices rise

The social partners are set to return to another round of talks on Friday to hammer out an action plan to tackle rising food prices, amid fears of shortages triggered by the slowdown in the global supply chain.

And Prime Minister Mia Mottley has signalled that Government is prepared to intervene to cushion the impact on consumers, since the spiralling cost of shipping and other issues are beyond the island’s control.

While delivering the 16th Patrick Emmanuel Memorial Lecture, Forging a Nation Confronting New Realities, on Wednesday evening, Mottley said the disruption in the global supply chain is concerning and has underscored that achieving domestic food and nutritional security is critical to survival.

She said the matter will be tackled at Friday’s talks, which will be the third such meeting amid prevailing concerns about the high cost of living which local businesses have mostly attributed to external factors.

Prime Minister Mottley said they will work towards measures that can stabilize and smooth out, as much as possible, the current situation.

“…. We may also have to play an intervention role with respect to some of the prices and costs because of that disruption,” she said. “The reality is that containers and shipping costs have gone right through the roof because of the scarcity that has predominated the food market in particular and the shipping with respect to containers.”

Likening the situation to “a war environment”, the Prime Minister said the meeting would also examine the broader issue of local food production and food security.

“We are not only looking at imports because there were two subcommittees – one that the private sector was on the forefront of, the import section; and then the other one which is a combined effort between the Ministry of Agriculture and the farmers in order to see how we can deal with this,” Mottley noted.

Earlier this month, noted economist Jeremy Stephen warned Barbadians to expect to pay more for goods this Christmas.

He told Barbados TODAY that the logistics issues were creating an “artificial scarcity”, which was contributing to the rising prices of goods.

“Given global trends recently, in terms of bungled logistics, the arguments are that logistically things are taking longer to get where they need to get so there is this artificial scarcity, and any time there is the word scarcity, one should expect a bump in prices,” Stephen said. (SD)