Cost of living forces Mozambican families to cut food basket

Selling for more than 20 years at the Xipamanine market, one of the largest in Maputo, Luísa Timane tells Lusa that she has never witnessed a crisis like the current one, which even changed her habits.

“We [my husband and I] were only able to buy vegetables for the house, now it’s just a matter of buying vegetables and bread for the children,” she says, while waiting for customers at the open-air stand, where she sells potatoes and onions in bags.

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Before, he would return home at 3:00 p.m., because the goods ran out early, but now he has to wait until around 6:00 p.m., because buyers want to haggle over the price and buy a ten-kilogram bag of onions for MT550  (€8) , the same with which Luísa Timane buys in the Zimpeto wholesale market, in Maputo, leaving her with no profit margin.

Ana Hobjana, who sells second-hand clothing at Xipamanine, says she has eliminated meat from her purchases and buys little rice and cornmeal because bills are tight.

“Everything is expensive, I don’t even put onions in my food anymore, everything is so expensive that we leave everything in God’s hands”, emphasizes Hobjana, letting slip her disbelief in human power to change the situation.

Ismael Raul Mussá left Mozambique Island, in the north of the country, for the capital 15 years ago, looking for a better life, but says that the situation is only getting worse with each passing day.

“With electricity for MT200 [about €3], it doesn’t take me three days, now I have to buy energy every day”, because the state electric company has increased the price of light, he says.

A few months ago, he bought 25 kilos of rice, but with the increase in the price of the product, he started to buy 10 kilos for his family of five.

They no longer drink soft drinks at home, and in addition to food, Ismael Raul Ali has to pay for his three children’s studies

A carpenter and Muslim, he cuts the interview off with a recital of the Koran in Arabic, which he later translates into Portuguese himself, to express his faith in better days: “I believe that God is unique”.

At the Xipamanine for shopping, Eunice Chemane says that now she takes little home and had to cut back on the basket, because money is less and less for increasingly high prices.

“I reduced frying, because with MT1,000 [€14.9] I could buy onions and potatoes and a couple of liters of oil, but now a 10-kilogram bag of onion costs MT600 [about €9]”.

“And the aggravating factor is that with MT600, I can return with only seven kilos, due to the tampering of the scale,” by the sellers, she complains.

Alberto Macucule was forced to leave, three years ago, his activity as an independent photographer at conservatories, because these services now take biometric photos, and he started to produce necklaces and bracelets that are sold on Xipamanine, but he is now back to face an uncertain future.

“When food is expensive, nobody is interested in cosmetics and I agree with people,” he points out.

For Macucule, it is only the rulers who do not understand the difficulties, “because they have privileges”.

On the cost of living, Adelaide Chivaca does not want to go into details, but she has already caught the culprits: The President of the Republic and the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo), the party in power.

“This country does not belong to [Filipe] Nyusi, it belongs to us”, says Chivaca, given the growing difficulties of survival in Maputo.

She has the tightest bills and fears for the future of her children, because she doesn’t have enough money to support their studies.

Adelaide Chivaca deplores what she considers the Government’s insensitivity to the suffering that the majority of the Mozambican population faces, regretting that the ruling party “only remembers the people in elections.”

“The politicians will need us in the elections and then we will speak,” she warns.

Year-on-year inflation in Mozambique decelerated in October for the second consecutive month to 11.83%, according to data from the National Statistics Institute (INE).

The pace of price increases had been increasing since February, reaching 12.96% in August, in line with the global inflationary trend, before settling at 12.71% in September.

From September to October, the year-on-year inflation rate fell by less than one percentage point (88 basis points), but it was the first time this year that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) cooled for two consecutive months.

According to INE data, this year’s accumulated inflation is now at 8.8%.

With information from Notícias ao Minuto