Food inflation is an invisible tax

Sep 11, 2024 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – There is an unmistakable cruelty in the way the poorest among us bear the brunt of economic policies and price shifts, unnoticed and unsung. Among these injustices is food inflation, an invisible tax that gnaws at the dignity of low-income earners.

A glance through the cost-of-living series in the Stabroek News reveals a chilling consistency in the narratives of those most affected. Their voices, often disregarded in the corridors of power, paint a portrait of suffering born not of want for luxuries, but for basic sustenance. Rice, sugar, cooking oil, and milk powder—these are the lifeblood of the working class and the poor, the staples of Guyanese survival. Yet, they are becoming increasingly out of reach, and the government appears indifferent.

In any functioning society, the sustenance of the population should be among the highest priorities of a governing body. Yet, in Guyana, the story of the small man—drawn from across the country and reflective of the national experience—suggests a different reality. The government’s tone-deafness to food inflation is not just an economic oversight; it is a moral failing. While the government trumpet grandiose projects and throw around statistics about economic growth, the poor are left grappling with how to stretch a paycheck that already dissolves too quickly under the weight of rising food prices.

Food inflation is one of the most regressive forces in an economy. Unlike the well-to-do, who can adjust their diets or cut out luxuries, the poor do not have the luxury of substitution. The poor are not fretting over the price of imported bacon, specially imported cheese, condensed milk or the rising cost of cornflakes. Their worry is the cost of rice, the cooking oil necessary to fry whatever little they can afford, the sugar for tea that is sometimes the only thing that can be stretched for an evening’s meal, and the milk powder that provides a meager semblance of nutrition to children. These are the basic items that constitute the lives of those living on the margins, and their rising costs spell hunger, deprivation, and indignity.

Yet, from the seats of power, one would think that the issue is abstract, something to be discussed in vague terms and with little urgency. “Inflation is global,” the government and officials will say, their voices laden with the sort of bureaucratic detachment that makes one wonder whether they have forgotten the faces of their own constituents. When the price of rice—a Guyanese staple—climbs a few hundred dollars, it places an undue strain on the reach of a low-income family. A few hundred dollars can be absorbed easily by the rich but not so easily by the poor. When the cost of cooking oil rises, families are forced to make painful choices: do they buy the oil to prepare the little they have, or save the money and go without? What is truly galling is that the government has, for the most part, chosen to look away, and in doing so, has chosen to let the suffering fester. The government cannot identify with the dilemma of low income consumers because the government is divorced from this class of consumers.

There is an elementary economic truth that escapes the self-assured mandarins who walk the halls of power: food inflation hits the poorest the hardest. There is no buffer for the small man when the price of basic goods rises by 10, 20, or 30 percent. For those living pay check to pay check, even a small increase in food prices sends shockwaves through their lives. And yet the government seems content to let this quiet crisis deepen. Its policies have not demonstrated any serious commitment to alleviating this burden. It has implemented policies: doling out tax subsidies to large merchants and giving a $500 subsidy on every gallon of petrol.  But these interventions are not reaching the small man and until Jagdeo understands this, the suffering of the poor will continue to remain inadequately addressed.

Instead, the ministers and their economic advisors act as though market forces are an immutable law, rather than something that can be shaped and regulated for the public good. We are told, of course, that market economies cannot be interfered with, that food subsidies would have long-term consequences. But there was a time when the flour mill received a subsidy on every bag of flour sold.

Guyana’s wealth is increasing exponentially, yet this wealth seems to only accumulate at the top. Oil revenues flow into government coffers, multinational corporations and the rich expand their operations, and new buildings rise in the capital, symbols of growth and development. But what does it mean if this growth is entirely disconnected from the lives of the average Guyanese? The gap between the government’s narrative of prosperity and the lived experience of the poor grows wider by the day. The result is a country where the wealth is as unevenly distributed as the attention given to those suffering.

And perhaps, therein lies the true crime. The government’s indifference is not just a failure of policy but a deliberate choice to ignore the suffering of those who do not have the power or influence to demand change. This is not a matter of incompetence but of insensitivity. For all the economic growth being touted, for all the talk of prosperity on the horizon, the government has made a cold calculation: the small man is not its priority.

The most disheartening part of this saga is that the solution is simple. The government could take immediate action to constrain the price of basic food items. The small basket of goods—rice, sugar, cooking oil, and milk powder—could be subsidized or subjected to price caps, bringing immediate relief to the poorest consumers. If the government truly cared about alleviating the suffering of the bottom tier of its citizens, it would act swiftly and decisively. But that is not the case. The government is content to watch as the poorest struggle, all the while congratulating itself on economic “growth.”

When people cannot afford the basics, it strips them of their dignity. It creates a kind of despair that no amount of economic growth can mitigate. And until the government wakes up to this reality, the poorest in Guyana will continue to suffer, victims of an indifferent and disconnected elite who seem to have forgotten the very people they were elected to serve.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this  newspaper.)

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• Economic, inflation, Peeping Tom, policies, priorities

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