Mozambique: Soaring food prices limit Christmas meals – report

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Mozambique: Soaring food prices limit Christmas meals – report

8:19 CAT | 18 Dec 2023

All photos: Luisa Nhantumbo/Lusa

Dércia Saugineta, a housewife, is going to reduce the menu she has planned for Christmas and New Year’s Eve in the face of rising prices at the market in Maputo, where she was only able to buy onions and potatoes, like many Mozambican families.

“For example, I haven’t bought oil and broth yet, but the money left over here will only be enough for chapa [transport]. I only bought potatoes and onions, the other things I wanted here I can’t afford,” this Mozambican woman told Lusa as she left the Zimpeto wholesale market, regretting that she had wanted to buy more, but only had the money left to take the transport home.

“Things are very expensive now,” complained the 23-year-old housewife, saying that she won’t be able to cook some dishes for Christmas because she couldn’t buy the ingredients.

“Of course, I won’t be able to prepare [some meals] because I can’t, because of the money,” she lamented.

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In the midst of the market frenzy, characteristic of the season, housewives are running around the market with empty plastic bags, looking for lower prices on potatoes and onions, the most sought-after products.

As they go back and forth with pen and shopping list in hand, the women are intercepted by the sellers, who warn them that the price is the same everywhere.

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A sack of onions used to sell for between 150 meticais (€2.10) and 190 meticais (€2.70), but now it costs 290 meticais (€4.10), and the same goes for a sack of potatoes, which used to sell for 300 meticais (€4.27) and is now around 390 meticais (€5.50), but could be as high as 500 meticais (€7.12).

Adelina Tembe already knows that prices go up during the festive season, so she rushed to the Zimpeto wholesale market but arrived late because “all the prices have skyrocketed”.

“Prices have gone up. They’ve already gone up. I even got ahead of myself because I’d come to do my Christmas shopping, fearing this price rise, but potatoes and onions have already gone up,” said this housewife shortly after finishing her shopping for the festive season.

Despite being surprised by the prices, Adelina Tembe at least managed to buy “the basics and essentials” for her Christmas and New Year’s Eve celebrations.

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Having been selling in the market for almost 20 years, Mónica Macuácua, who is also a housewife, warns that this is only the beginning of the “saga”, because in two or three days prices will rise again, a situation she believes has worsened in recent years.

“This year is very difficult (…) it’s not like previous years,” she emphasised, adding that prices are “very alarming” and “rising daily”, said Mónica Macuácua, inside her carrot and sweet potato stall, displayed in a busy aisle of the market.

According to data from the National Statistics Institute (INE), Mozambique “registered a rise in the general price level of around 5.36%” over the 12 months to November, influenced by food. In the space of one month alone, compared to October, prices in Mozambique rose by 1.17% due to the increase in food and drink costs, INE said.

“Prices are still going to go up. They’re still going to skyrocket,” said Isaías Ismael, a potato and onion seller in the wholesale market, saying that customers are complaining and have opted to buy only half the bag in order to “manage the bills”.

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