Food prices rise across the Pacific
Updated
The drought in Australia and New Zealand, combined with the high cost of fuel, has begun hitting hard on many consumers in the Pacific.In the Kingdom of Tonga a quick comparison show's the price of imported food is at least 20 percent dearer than in its more developed neighbours like Australia.That extra cost means many people are finding it hard to make ends meet.And to keep their families fed, a lot of them are returning to the traditional staples grown in village gardens.
Presenter: Pacific Correspondent Campbell Cooney is in Tonga at the moment, and he had a look at the issue of food, and who's the worst affected Speaker: Mele Aminak is is the General Secretary of Tonga's Public Service
COONEY: A walk down the aisles of a supermarket in Tonga's capital Nuku'alofa shows just how expensive it can be to live in a Pacific Island Nation. The prices I saw for staples like meat. Rice and canned food, were anything from 30 to 20 percent dearer than they cost in Melbourne, the Australian city I call home. Mele Aminak is is the General Secretary of Tonga's Public Service Association, and a unsuccessful candidate in last week's national elections. She campaigned on the issue of trying to address the cost of living.
AMINAK:There's a couple of reasons the cost of living in Tonga's exhorbitant.
COONEY: Right now Australia and New Zealand, where most of the products in supermarkets is coming from, are both in the grip of major droughts, and their farmers just can't grow and produce enough to meet all the market demands. But what's having just as bad an effect is the price of oil.
In recent months it's increased drastically. And when the price of fuel goes up, so does the cost of freight, and that's driving up costs in the Pacific, where just about everything from food, to clothing, to vehicles, to even fuel itself, comes with a significant transport cost. Yogendra Prasad manages one of the supermarkets in Nuku'alofa, and says they've begun looking for cheaper sources of product, to ensure their customers don't look elsewhere.
But the majority of Mr Prasad's customers are the expatriate community, mostly well paid, and able to extend their budget to the extra cost. For most Tongan's the cost is getting to dear, and they're relying more and more on the gardens of their home villages, providing staples like Taro, Sweet Potatoes and bananas, or they're buying them from the markets and stalls dotted along the roadsides.
But if you drive along the waterfront in Nuku'alofa, past the bars, restaurants and motels, you come to the part of town where the increased cost is being felt the most.
The Patagata settlement has around 70 families living in it, and they're amongst the poorest and most disenfranchised people in the Kingdom, surviving on the fish they catch, and the vegetables they can trade for. The chairman of the community is Pule Pule, and he says the shops of Nuku'alofa are way out of their grasp.
But Mele Aminaki says its not just in the shops, or just imported foods, which are getting expensive.
This is Campbell Cooney in Nuku'alofa, for Pacific Beat.
