Inflation Increasing but At a Slower Speed  

About a month ago, News Five conducted random interviews regarding inflation, revealing a disconnect between public perception and official statistics, which indicated a low inflation rate. However, today, Diana Trejo from the Statistical Institute of Belize acknowledged that inflation is indeed rising, with prices of goods higher than they were two years ago. She noted that while prices are increasing, the pace of that increase has slowed.

 

Diana Trejo, Director General, S.I.B.

“What we are seeing in our data is that the rate of inflation, meaning how fast prices are going up has been slowing. This doesn’t mean that prices are coming down, and that’s a very important distinction. It just means it’s not going up as fast. But if you compare the price level or the CPI 2024 to 2020 before the pandemic and pandemic-induced inflation, prices overall are almost thirty percent higher than they were four years ago. So, it is very true that while the speed at which prices are rising is slowing down, prices are still much, much higher than they were four years ago, in particular, food prices, the inflation for food has been persistently high. The underlying causes of why prices are rising for these items, we are not at this point able to say that, although we do know that we import the vast majority of the goods that we consume. So, if our trade partners are seeing higher rates of inflation, we will see that trickle down to us. And when our trading partners see inflation slowing down, likewise it trickles down to us.”

 

Marion Ali

“What about products that are locally produced? We have vegetables, we have meat products that are done right in Belize and the prices are also going up on those.”

 

Diana Trejo

“Yeah, one of the things to remember is that all of these products that are produced in Belize have inputs that go into them and a lot of the inputs are also imported Indeed. Um, a lot of them, for example, fuel is an important input. Um, for the agricultural sector, fertilizer is an important input.”