Unhappily chasing the Fiji costs spiral

Fiji, battling to combat inflation, imposed a prices, rents and wages freeze for 90 days from April 1, and can extend another 60 days if needed. The freeze even includes company dividends. Breaches can bring fines up to $2,000. The Goven ment said Fiji's inflation rate in 1966 was 0.3 per cent, but it rose to 6.5 in 1971 and to 9.1 in 1972. The recent cost squeei on Fiji householders is described in this report from SEONA MARTIN, in Suva.

Jone Ratulevu’s family learnt about inflation the day his wife served potatoes instead of dalo.

Dalo is a traditional staple food in Fiji, much preferred by most people to potatoes or even other island root crops such as cassava and kumala.

Rebellious muttering echoed among the Ratulevu family’s dinner plates when potatoes were served. “Dalo is $2 a bundle in the market this week. Potatoes are 12c lb. We eat potatoes,” Sala Ratulevu said firmly.

Rapidly spiralling costs are pushing traditional Fiji foods off the table, to be replaced, if at all, by foreign foods which are cheaper or can be bought in smaller quantities.

Shoppers were recently faced with the prospect of buying bunches of Fiji-grown bananas for 50c a dozen, or imported New Zealand apples for 30c lb.

Not that imported foods are cheap.

The cost of almost everything has risen significantly in the past 12 months, particularly since hurricane Bebe wiped out many Fiji crops in October. The consumer prices index rose almost 17 points from January

last year to January this year, almost double the rate of increase for the previous year. From October to January the index increased an average of four points a month.

Or as Susana, mother of four school-age children, put it: "I spend more money in the market each week, but still my basket gets .no heavier.”

The Government statistician re ported a modest increase of three tenths of a point in the consumer prices index between January and February. He put it down to slightly cheaper food as crops begin to re cover after the hurricane and changes i,n some school fees.

But rents still showed an upward trend, continuing a pattern which has worried urban dwellers and store keepers for the past two years. Even cool drinks have gone up, as any school child trying to stretch his pocket-money knows.

“What I dislike most is finding two or three cents added to things in the supermarket from one week to the next,” a Suva shopper complained.

“When you ask why, you are told it is ‘because of the freight’.”

Shopkeepers explain freight rate

go up several weeks, or even month; before the increase shows on th shelves. As old stock is used up, ne l stock at a new price is put out. Nc all increases are in the “two or thre ce,nts” bracket.

A distraught New Zealander bac in Fiji after a week’s home leave wj stunned by a quick trip to the supe market to stock up supplies the da she returned.

“I only bought two things—a doze eggs and a pound of lamb piece Eggs were up 12c a dozen, the mei had risen 4c lb,” she said.

Another shopper gleefully spied

carton of cream in a city store aft* it had been unavailable for mar weeks. She said she was just reachir for it when the price stopped her.

“It was 30c a carton. Last time bought it, the price was about 20 certainly no more than 22c. I decide the family had done without creaj when we could not get it, so th* could go without now.”

Some of the most bitter commerr about inflation come from isolat*

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village people, who bear the brunt of ordinary increases and extravagant freight costs.

Even in the most subsistence com munity which could almost support itself with food, people still need to buy such things as soap, benzine for outboards, kerosene for lamps, and baby food—not to mention tea, sugar, utensils and other commodities civilisation has made necessary to the contemporary Fiji Islander.

Small communities operating co operative stores cannot buy in huge amounts and sometimes lose whole sale price advantages. It costs them extra to bring the goods by truck or boat from the nearest town, where the goods have already been freighted.

The main complaint of these vil lagers is that their costs keep in creasing but they have no wages to go up correspondingly.

A representative of Fiji’s active Consumer Council was told recently by an embittered village leader: “Every time there is a strike in Suva the wages go up. Then the prices go up. We have to pay the higher prices too, but who can put our wages up?

We do not earn any steady wages.”

The villagers sell produce from time to time, or get occasional work, but because of their isolation and life-style a steady income is almost

an impossibility.

Two years ago inflation was a word economists and smart sixth-formers knew. Now every Fiji housewife, breadwinner and remote villager knows its meaning and its effect.