Cost of living and food prices

Jul 14, 2025 Editorial

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Kaieteur News – In our lead article yesterday, we reported that poor Guyanese who do their shopping at the Bourda and Stabroek markets paid significantly more for some of the everyday food items than they did just three years ago, as prices for meats, vegetables, and seasonings continue to rise.

In fact, an analysis of the July 3, 2025 price list from the Guyana Marketing Corporation (GMC) shows widespread increases in both wholesale and retail prices for key commodities. Among the steepest climbs are seen in the meat category, where local chicken, which retailed for $381.55 per pound in 2020 and $488.33 in 2022, is now selling for up to $560 per pound at Stabroek Market and $520 per pound at Bourda.

Beef, priced at $430.37 per pound in 2020, had reached $659.74 in 2022, and now stands at $950 per pound, more than doubling its 2020 cost. Pork has also seen a sustained increase, now retailing at $750 per pound, up from $585.46 in 2022 and $417.17 in 2020. As it relates to, vegetables and seasonings, these food items are no exception to the trend. Bora which was selling at $348.19 per pounds in 2020, surged to an extraordinary $6,915.31 by 2022. The 2025 price has stabilised somewhat to about $2,100 per bundle.

High cost of living has been suffocating citizens for over two years now.  The ‘small’ money that citizens have in their hands buys less and less when they go shopping.  Shopping for essentials, especially food and medicines, can be a parent’s worst nightmare, a state of intensifying fearfulness since higher prices could be what awaits, have to be paid.  The PPP/C Government has more millions in its hands, but it does not prioritise what is helpful to hurting people, but is more about projects, where underhanded activities have drained the nation’s coffers, and enrich political operators.

Struggling citizens have scant interest in another project that involves cement and steel, and the many millions that go into them, to erect new monuments to our prosperity.  Whose prosperity, certainly not the many citizens living in poverty, and often hungry?  Guyanese learn of more loans taken, and more millions borrowed for building road and educational and health capacity, and they wonder what about the yawning, gnawing capacity in their stomachs that cannot be half-filled almost daily.  Why is it with all the sweet political speeches from leaders that citizens still live at the same standard (perhaps worse) as eight years ago, when the first announcements came about oil discoveries?

The statistics say that Guyanese are incredibly rich, yet there are all these citizens of Guyana that struggle to buy greens and vegetables to put a simple meal on the table for their families.  The PPP/C Government, an unequalled master at propaganda, has said that it cares.  The question that can be asked is what do the Government and its leaders really care about, aside from the self-enriching interests of both.  When everything else becomes a distant second, when the struggles of poor and weak and vulnerable citizens amount to more opportunities for political games, then care is not a factor.  But only another instance of the conceits and corruptions that control the minds of the government specifically, and local politicians in general.

Handing out money as an expression of care for children and the plight of their parents is not only helpful, but also inspired. When, however, there is the taint of encouragement for elections purposes, because of the timing, then talk about care comes across as circumstances of hardship converted into circumstances of political expediency and convenience.  A good thing, what was believed to have started out as meaningful and helpful, falls flat on its face.

What about when there are no elections on the calendar?  Are those in need then callously left on their own, to get by however they can, by whatever means?  Caring that is genuine is full-time, and it has no strings that tie it to anything. There is nothing that links it to the politically suspect, what could be interpreted as the calculating underhandedness of politicians with no heart, most likely little by way of integrity and plain human decency left. Tens of thousands of Guyanese across the various regions are grappling with cost of living, especially in the remote hinterland communities of our first peoples, and all they are useful for is to fulfill some role that keeps politicians in business, and enrich them further.

We can be proud of the hundreds of billions in Guyanese dollars that spent for wood and glass, sand and asphalt, but our left behind do not have enough to buy food. High cost of living is not a big table with numbers on it; high cost of living is a table without enough food on it, it is a house with less and lesser hope, as the days go by. When so many Guyanese are faint with hope, so infirm of feet, when forced to face vendors and sellers, then all this chatter about caring and world class richness makes a mockery of their painful existence.

No government should be pleased to stand over such a situation.  No President of authentic leadership attributes should preside over what Guyanese live with, leaving them unable to cope.  Only the sustained and the materially significant in hand is going to make a difference and not the usual politicking and self-congratulating by this PPP/C Government at the controls.

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