The most recent Bulletin of Supply and Food Security delivered by the Agricultural Rural Planning Unit (UPRA) in October, food prices increased but in lesser proportion than what was registered in September.
This change is due to the improvement in the supply of fruit and vegetables, especially rush and bighead onions, mangoes, passion fruit and oranges, which which partially corrects the increases presented in previous months.
(Read: Inflation finds no ceiling and would exceed 12% in October).
However, they were recorded price hikes of potatoes, rice, dried beans, meats, eggs, in addition to panela, artisanal cheeses and some processed foods.
“The latest report on the behavior of input prices, especially fertilizers, indicates that during the last three months prices have dropped; This does not correct the increases presented since January 2021, but it does reduce the pressure for costs to increase, and therefore the prices of products”, pointed out Felipe Fonseca Fino, director of the Agricultural Rural Planning Unit.
Now, another of the factors that would be affecting the price of food, despite domestic production, is the increase in the price of the dollar that this week reached its all-time high and is trading above 5,000 pesos.
“The increase in the exchange rate ends up affecting these markets in different ways and with very different impacts, depending on whether it is a final consumer product or a raw material. The prices of products such as big-headed onions, dry beans, yellow corn, lentils, chickpeas, among others, partly reflect the movements of the exchange rate”, Fonseca added.
Likewise, the winter wave that is lived in different parts of the national territory has affected the production of certain foods such as potatoes, rice and eggs. Regarding vegetables, such as onions, there has been a reduction in their supply and an increase in their prices. This is one of the products that contributes the most to inflation.
In the consumer price index (CPI) an increase of 5.9% in its prices was registered for September, while in wholesalers, as usual, the increases were greater: up to 7.7% in white heads and 11.3% in onions that come from the center of the country.
(Also: Dollar at $5,000: how the historical devaluation of the peso is explained).
Regarding the potato, one of the key products of Colombian consumption, there has also been a reduction of its supply from September but more evident in October.
“The increases that occurred in the wholesale prices of the potato exceeded 30% in varieties such as the sabanera, the supreme, the superior, the red and black r-12, the only one, the capira and the parda pastusa, among others.”, explains the bulletin.
Similarly, despite the winter, during October the offer of some fresh fruits increased. The cases of the Tommy and the common mango, the arrayana, oneco and common mandarin stand out; the cantaloupe melon, the red plum, the Castile blackberry, the pin, the tree tomato, the lulo, the Valencia and sweet orange and the passion fruit. In many of them, the reductions exceed 10%; These are the cases of mangoes, cantaloupe melons, oranges and Castile blackberries.
Dollar
istock
For its part, rice prices they continue with an upward trend as well as dried beans. Situation that is replicated in the value of beef, pork and chicken.
(Read on: $20 million? This is what the middle class in the country really earns.)
In beef, cuts such as the hip, the rib and the andiron presented increases in their prices that fluctuated between 0.5% and 1.5%. In pork, the price increases were higher and were between the 2.6% that occurred in the rib and the pork loin, where the rise reached 4.4%. Finally, fresh whole chicken without viscera, as well as pernil leg without tailbone, showed increases of 1.3% in their prices.
Finally, they registered price increases in avocados, pineapples, papayas and lemons.
BRIEFCASE
