How 1.6% Inflation Feels Like 16%

Sep 04, 2024 Dem Boys Seh, Features / Columnists, News

Kaieteur News – De government has spoken! Yes, you heard it right: de almighty Consumer Price Index has only gone up by a mere 1.6% in the first half of dis year, and over the last 12 months, inflation was pegged at a modest 4%. Now, before we all throw a grand celebration and shower dem officials with confetti made from last month’s grocery bills, let we tek a moment to scratch we heads and wonder—did someone mix up their numbers? Because in the real world, where the rest of us mere mortals live, dem prices are doing the cha-cha-cha to a different tune.

You see, these numbers must belong to some other parallel universe. Maybe it’s a universe where de milk and bread grow on trees, where rice is handed out as party favours, and where cooking oil is a natural product that is pumped in your backyard. In this fantastical realm, 1.6% and 4% inflation might make sense. But here on hard-rock Guyana, those numbers might as well be written in invisible ink.

The reality on the ground is that prices are murdering we. Forget inflation, it feels more like we deh in Gaza Every trip to the market is like stepping into a battlefield, with shoppers trying to dodge skyrocketing prices like they’re dodging bullets. Just last week, dem boys saw a woman try to haggle for a bunch of greens as if her life depended on it—and it probably did. Chicken, fish, flour, you name it—it’s all suddenly a luxury. Dem chicken coming out stunted like de last sugar crop and de prices have increased. So while de chicken getting smaller, de price becoming fatter. Yuh might soon have to apply to de bank fuh buy fruits. Bananas are now $300 per lb.

So, let’s be real here. Unless these inflation numbers are taking into account some secret discount aisle that only a privileged few know about, they don’t reflect what the average Guyanese is feeling. We’re being squeezed tighter than a tube of toothpaste at the end of the month, and no amount of creative accounting can change that.

Talk half. Leff half!

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Consumer Price Index, different, Government, inflation, mortals

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