Consumers bemoan high cost of living
FRANCISTOWN: Rising inflation is beginning to weigh heavily on the lives of ordinary citizens.
The current inflation rate is at 10.6% and is the highest the country has experienced since March 2009. The rate has been driven by the price increases in many commodities, particularly fuel.
Local commodity suppliers, amongst them Bolux Milling, have warned that due to imported inflation necessitated by factors such as the war in Ukraine, which has impacted negatively on the global supply chain, consumers should brace themselves for regular price increases on basic commodities such as bread and maize. Other suppliers are expected to follow suit. Prices of other key commodities such as cooking oil have also increased substantially in recent months.
Keletso Morake, who has been trading as a street vendor for the past seven years, is amongst those who are feeling the pinch of the rising cost of living. Morake told Mmegi that she recently reduced her stock because her business was running at a loss owing due to a shift in customers’ spending patterns. She said that she observed that her customers were now prioritising very basic commodities at the expense of her products in a bid to counter the high cost of living.
Morake sells biscuits, sweets, drinks, chips and cooked food. Her business is located along Haskin’s Street commonly known as Bulawayo Street. Morake is convinced that if prices of many commodities continue to rise and the fortunes of her business do not change, she may end up being forced to go back to her home village of Bobonong.
“At the moment I make a monthly profit of nearly P700, which is way below what I used to make when the cost of living was relatively fair. I am lucky as the father of my last born gives me reasonable child maintenance, which helps cover rent and groceries, but he is also feeling the pinch of the high cost of living,” she said.
Mobile hawker, Onkabetse Bolotsang, residing in Donga, is also battling with the high cost of living. The mother of two sells bottled ginger on the streets. She quit her job to venture into business because the money she earned was not enough to sustain her and her family.
Bolotsang’s full-time job paid P1,000 per month and from that, she had to pay rent, transport, and buy food for herself, her children and two immediate family members being her mother and sister.
“When I started the business in December, I was selling one bottle at P10 and made approximately P250 per day. My customers started complaining that the ginger was expensive, and I had to reduce it to P7. I no longer make enough profit,” said the 29-year-old. She also raised concerns that some of her suppliers might hike their prices, which will do more harm to her business as people are already complaining about the pricing of her ginger.
Kganetso Pogeso, who works as a shop assistant here, sums up the cost of living as a “heartbreaking situation”. Pogeso stated that his salary of P1,200 a month does not cover his monthly expenditure at all. “I have decided to cut a lot of commodities in a bid to cope with the high cost of living but the effort is still not enough. It is a sad situation.”
Pogeso disclosed that due to the high cost of living, he has started making fewer calls and visits to his parents in Bobonong. He made a passionate plea to government to significantly increase the minimum wage so that it tallies with the current cost of living. However, economist Sennye Obuseng said not much can be done by government to counter inflation or the high costs of living because these are a result of external factors. He said that it is up to the consumers to device coping mechanisms until the situation stabilises.
Competition and Consumer Authority (CCA) Communications and Stakeholder Relations Director, Gideon Nkala said the anticipated commodity price hikes of grains and their derivatives such as wheat, maize, pasta, flour, bread and others will substantially affect the economy.
“The brunt will particularly be felt by SMMEs, the rural poor and consumers in general who are dependent on these basic food items for survival and business,” he said. Government recently came up with several import quotas and bans on some products such as wheat, confectionaries and most recent, vegetables as a way of integrating SMMEs into the local supply chain. However, Nkala warned that the anticipated price hikes were likely to frustrate these noble efforts as the production cost of SMMEs would shoot up and could potentially spell doom. He explained that many of the increases are driven by market volatility in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine war and there is little that the authority ‘can do about it’.
The CCA also acknowledged that whenever there is some volatility in the market, there is bound to be some incentive for some businesses to engage in anti-competitive behaviour, which could even increase the prices further. For this reason, Nkala noted that CCA as a regulator will ensure that greedy and unscrupulous suppliers do not use the war to pass unnecessary burdens to the consumer to make above normal gains.
“The CCA would be expected to ensure that the price hikes are as a result of supply and demand and not because of any other market barriers,” Nkala said. “Any other anti-competitive agency would have to be investigated and punished in terms of the Competition Act.
“The CCA would therefore be expected to monitor the market with the whole aim of ensuring suppliers do not resort to anti-competitive conduct such as price-fixing and other forms of collusion.”