There is concern in Colombia about the price of one of the most common foods of breakfasts and snacks for families in the country: bread. According to the most recent figures from the National Administrative Department of Statistics (Dane), this output could be worth up to a thousand pesos.
According to the entity, in March of this year there was an almost 25% increase in the prices of various foods, which caused inflation to rise by up to 8.53%, which would trigger the food crisis and affect the products of bakeries in the country.
The issue has already caused so much anguish among consumers and businessmen that the National Federation of Cereal, Legume and Soy Growers (Fenalce) warns that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has a significant influence on the rise in prices, given that almost one hundred percent of the wheat with which bread is kneaded comes from foreigner.
“From a while now there began to be a high dependence on imported wheat in the country. The national stayed for soups, cuchucos and something for biscuits,” said Henry Vargas, general manager of Fenalce, in testimonies on the Publimetro portal.
And it's not the only alert on the subject. The newspaper La República consulted with Pilar Ortiz, Executive Director of the Fedemol Chamber of the National Association of Entrepreneurs (Andi), who assures that this situation does not promise to improve in the coming months.
Ortiz says that if Colombians were already getting used to buying bread at 600 and 700 pesos, unfortunately those values could increase and the unit could get up to 1,000 pesos of the national currency.
For several buyers, bread at 200 pesos is already a utopian, given that bread has been on the rise for years. This was stated, in an interview with Caracol Radio, the director of Fenalce, who believes that “it is likely that we will have the bread unit to be 1,000”, noted, not before ratifying the prices at which these foods are bought today.
However, the situation of breads is not the only one that worries, given that the above-mentioned executives warn that other products in the family basket such as arepas, patacones, among others, could have significant increases. “We are going to have to be recursive and not rely solely on imported raw materials, this policy has to change. Because not only are there high prices in the international market, if oil rises, the exchange rate of the dollar increases and that affects prices,” noted Henry Vargas, who said since when Colombia, which is a largely agricultural country, stopped producing wheat to bring it from abroad.
Moreover, Corficolombiana relates the rise in the price of bread to other factors such as the 73% increase in the fruit with which sunflower oil is produced, which is also used to produce breads.
The news of bread at a thousand pesos already has the lovers of these products dismayed. And it's no wonder, according to figures from the National Federation of Merchants (Fenalco), an average Colombian consumes at least 20 kilograms of bread annually. “The problem is the price, because for now there is no shortage, but due to demand, prices and delivery times are also increasing,” said the director of Fenalce.
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