A blue Christmas

There are days when Shaunee* assesses her economic situation and bursts into tears.

Life is tough for the 38-year-old Trinidadian mother-of-three, who earns little as an itinerant geriatric nurse.

Trying desperately to fight back tears, and with her voice cracking sometimes, she relates with excruciating clarity how difficult it is to feed her children, one of whom has special needs.

“Sometimes I don’t know where the food coming from,” Shaunee told The Sunday Gleaner. “Sometimes I have to cry, but I don’t want them to see me crying.”

In recent months, she has seen prices of basic necessities such as food and feminine products double at the supermarket, and with funds difficult to come by, it means there are no presents for her children this Christmas.

“I feel not like a good mother,” she said of her inability to afford Christmas presents, the sadness in her voice palpable.

Like Shaunee, this threatens to be a blue Christmas for Camila*, a Dominican university graduate who would like to pay a visit to the hairdresser or the spa, but the mother-of-one is forced to choose between treating herself and feeding her baby.

“Sometimes I want to do a pedicure, you know, go get my feet looking nice or go get my hair done, but when I think about it, I can’t because I can’t use her milk money,” the 32-year-old woman told The Sunday Gleaner, her frustration evident.

In fact, there are times she must choose between buying milk and purchasing nappies for the little girl, and often relatives abroad must come to her rescue by sending her cash or essentials.

“You have to rely so much on your family overseas for boxes or for money, and it shouldn’t be like that,” stated the young mother. “It shouldn’t be like that.”

The pressure that these two are under, and the choices and sacrifices they are forced to make are representative of what populations across the Caribbean must navigate daily.

Among them is Kathleen Cooke, a 58-year-old baker from Montego Bay, Jamaica, who closed her bakery when COVID-19 struck and has been doing odd jobs since.

She has noticed that gradually, her weekly bill for groceries has risen from around J$15,000 to as high as J$25,000.

“Everything I need is available, but the issue is that prices have increased from 25 per cent to 50 per cent over the past year and a half,” Cooke, who takes care of her 87-year-old mother, shared.

POTENTIAL FOR A HUMANITARIAN CRISIS

In a region where COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on economies, leading to an increase in the poverty rate of seven percentage points and the potential for a humanitarian crisis, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, even those with a job struggle to make ends meet.

Complicating matters is a steady rise in food prices, triggered by a slowdown in the global supply chain. Across the Caribbean, from Jamaica to Trinidad and Tobago, and everywhere in-between, consumers and retailers alike worry about the rising costs, blamed on rising international freight prices.

For example, the cost of shipping one container was US$4,000 in 2019, but has skyrocketed to US$20,000 this year, according to Rajiv Diptee, president of the Supermarket Association of Trinidad and Tobago.

“There is an ongoing situation for a number of months now where the cost of container shipping, freight and insurance continues to put a strain on a global supply chain and we’re feeling it particularly in the islands [of the Caribbean],” Diptee noted. “The frequency of price increases by company, supplier or distributor has been alarming over the last 18 months.”

Globally, food prices rose 1.2 per cent in November compared to October, and were at their highest level since June 2011, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in its monthly report released on December 2. After adjusting for inflation, food prices averages for the 11 months of 2021 are the highest in 46 years, stated the FAO.

In the Caribbean’s largest tourism markets, the United States and the United Kingdom, inflation has climbed to its highest level in decades, prompting further concerns about the possible impact on tourism-dependent economies such as Jamaica.

In the UK, inflation jumped to a 10-year high in November, with the consumer price index rising by 5.1 per cent in the 12 months to November, up from 4.2 per cent in October, while in the US, consumer prices grew 6.2 per cent in October over the previous 12 months, the highest in three decades.

“You look at people who’ve been in lockdown and they’ve depleted their savings, there’s a loss of revenue by the fact that we have less breadwinners per fixed income household, and when we talk to all the companies in Trinidad and Tobago that also operate in the wider Caribbean, that is also something they let us know, that the revenues have been down around key performance brand earners that they would have depended on,” revealed Diptee.

HIGHER ELECTRICITY COST

Coupled with the rising food prices is the escalating cost of electricity, with the Jamaica Public Service (JPS) warning customers to brace for higher bills in the coming weeks as the company faces increasing fuel costs because of an upsurge in international prices.

Jamaica currently has the sixth highest electricity costs in the world – 44.7 US cents per kilowatt-hour – behind only Solomon Islands (99 cents), Vanuatu (60 cents), the United States Virgin Islands (51.9 cents), Cook Islands (50.2 cents) and Tonga (47 cents), according to World Atlas.

At this rate, Jamaicans pay an average of J$11,688 for electricity for an 85 square-metre apartment, according to Numbeo, a crowdsourced global database of reported consumer prices.

“The cost of electricity has gone up,” said Kathleen Cooke, the baker from Montego Bay. “So my personal consumption has gone down because I have put conservation activities into practice.”

In its latest update released on December 15, the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN) revealed that the consumer price index remained relatively unchanged for November, after consumer prices jumped 8.5 per cent in October compared to the previous year, and one per cent over September, the highest inflation rate since 2013.

“While there were increases in most divisions, the overall movement in the inflation rate was tempered by a 1.8 per cent decline in the index for the heavily weighted ‘Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages’ division,” STATIN reported.

There was a decrease in prices for ground provisions and non-alcoholic beverages, mainly due to lower costs for some agricultural produce such as yam, tomato and cabbage, but there were “notable increases” of 2.8 per cent in the cost of housing, water, electricity and other fuels “due to increases in the electricity, water and sewage rates”.

According to Numbeo estimates, monthly costs for a family of four here are J$349,711, while it costs a single person about J$96,915. But these expenses do not include rent.

Still, the cost of living here is 1.16 times lower than the world average and Jamaica ranked 96th out of 197 countries by cost of living and the 107th best country to live in, according to LivingCost.org, another crowdsourced global database of reported consumer prices.

That’s slightly better than Trinidad and Tobago, which ranked as the 117th best country to live in, and where Shaunee continues to feel like a working pauper.

“I don’t even know how I do it,” exclaimed Shaunee with resignation. “Ah still trying to figure out that part.”

*Names changed to protect identity.

editorial@gleanerjm.com