Mozambique: SERNIC seizes a tonne of drugs in Nampula
Photo: O País
It is increasingly difficult to put Mozambique’s much-loved daily bread on the table in Inhambane province. Last Monday, a loaf of bread which used to cost seven meticais went up to nine meticais, and the 12 meticais loaf to 14 meticais.
The price increase is suffocating Dona Joaquina, who lives with seven other people. Even before the price hike, she spent 84 meticais a day just to put bread on the table – a total of 2,520 meticais a month.
But the rise in the price of bread has made things even tighter, and Joaquina tells O País she was surprised when, this Tuesday, she sent her son to buy bread and he came back empty-handed, the price having gone up.
At the ‘Lega Lega’ market in Inhambane, O País met Valódia, a young woman who, in addition to studying, sells bread to help with her family’s expenses. She says that things haven’t been the same for two days, as the rise in the price of bread has reduced her customers, reducing her income.
Valódia explains that, ever since the price of bread went up, customers have stopped going to her stall. As a result, she has cut by half – from 100 to 50 – the number of loaves of bread she buys to resell.
Those who knead the bread and put it on the table says they have to bend over backwards in order not to be seen as the villain of the piece.
In November of last year, a 50-kilogram sack of wheat cost 1,800 meticais, but today, it’s 2,350 meticais.
In Inhambane, O País visited a bakery that normally produces 6,000 loaves of bread a day, using 10 sacks of wheat – about 300 a month, at a cost of 705,000 meticais.
But the expenses don’t stop there. The bakery pays 20,000 meticais per month for electricity, 30,000 for fuel, 150,000 meticais for the wages of its 12 workers, 20,000 meticais for firewood, 3,000 meticais for water and 4,000 meticais for other ingredients.
Before the price increase, the bakery had revenue from sales of 1,260,000 meticais, of which 912,000 went on direct operating costs. In the end, the bakery was left with 348,000 meticais for other expenses such as taxes, and the maintenance of vehicles, the oven and the industrial mixer.
Faced with this situation, bakers argue that there was no alternative but to raise the price of bread, as operating costs were already throttling them.
On the one hand, production costs have increased and the price of bread has risen. On the other hand, production has dropped and revenues have shrunk.
In the past, bakeries were seen as crowded places, but nowadays, almost no one goes to buy bread, because the budget doesn’t allow it.
By Hugo Firmino
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