The cost of goods and services in Seychelles has reached a breaking point.
Hotels, operators, visitors, residents are crying foul. The price of a meal or a drink in a restaurant is astronomical. The price of one five star room with breakfast in Seychelles, will get you one five star room in Mauritius for Five nights. What is government doing about it? What is the National Assembly doing out it? Nil.
Tomato Fever!
Two weeks ago the Minister of Agriculture announced a total ban on imported tomatoes from South Africa, where the price is very competitive, allows STC a fair mark up and sells for SCR. 40.00 per kilo . Local tomatoes retail for SCR. 35.00 a kilo, have less water, are firm and meaty, if you permit the expression.
ISPC sells tomatoes imported from Europe for SCR. 140.00 per kilo. The quality is "A" Grade preferred by chefs, but it kills the profit margins of restaurants, turns the to,to into a speciality, that will offend any French or Italian guest.
When the Minister of Agriculture announced the ban on Tomatoes, he did not set a date, nor set a plan to encourage farmers to plant tomatoes. Based on STC declarations and other importers, this is a 20 Million rupee business per month for Seychelles. Farmers could pick up the slack,if government was a bit more business minded and focused on solving the issues that prevent tomato production.
As the Ministry of Agriculture fails, the opportunity to resolve the expensive tomato crisis fails.
Corn Mania!
Corn is. Basic staple, used to produce pork, beef, chicken. A chicken produced locally sells for 65.00 per kilo. Corn in Seychelles retails for SCR. 95.00 per kilo. Nuts! Why has government not instructed IDC to take Farquar island to produce corn? High quality corn can be sold for our tables. Lower grade corn can be sold to the meal factory for chickens, pigs. This simple move, will reduce the cost of pork, chicken, beef, and yes, corn.
Instead what are we doing? Importing corn from Mauritius, from Mauritian companies, who are producing corn in Mozambique. Come on guys, sort out these basic problems that have solutions.
Pumpkin Tips!
A Pumpkin sells for as much as 45.00 per kilo. A pumpkin. My Son saw this amazing cost of pumpkins, he started a patch. In no time he was making SCR. 1500.00 a week from the local Indian shop keeper. He sold the pumpkins for SCR. 25.00 a kilo. The shop keeper ticked the price up to SCR. 45.00 a kilo. That is a crime. The pumpkin does not use air conditioning. It sits in a box on the floor of the shop, it's self time is a turn around of no more then 3 days.
The masters of the 13 th Month Salary who caused the cost of a hotel room to shoot up by 40% should come up with some serious solutions to reduce the cost of food items in Seychelles, never mind about expensive clothes and cars. We are use to being screwed into a kicanto for the cost of a BMW.
Sesel Pou Seselwa!
May God Bless All Freedom Loving Seychellois!
12 comments:
We need to be more self sufficient in fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately the focus so far has been on growing fish instead.
We cannot maintain the supply of chicken feed and pig grower regularly, how are we going to maintain the supply of fish food?
Agree ,we neeed to be more self sufficient and we can be if government takes th issue seriously.WHy must we beg the government to give our farmers Farquar for farming ..........?We should have been developing them a long time ago ........
The government must listen to Seychellois and do what the people want not glenny savy ......I bleive not only farquar but other islands must be used for farming.......chicken farming ------we import tons of chickens ..bad chickens from Brazil while we could use an outter island and do it our selves .........Good bio products with high returns......In fact on Farquar ..we could have cron farm as well as chickens farms ...........even tomatoes farm......
It is time to take over our outter isalnds from Glenny and start producing to feed our people ....Glenny savy cannot be the guy to decide what we are going to do with our properties ......
We must recognize the problem of shortages is really a government fialures to be pro active in regards to farming and being self suffificent ......
SIMPLY TAKES CONTROL OF OUR OUTTER ISLANDS from glenny ...
7.22
you see these tons of seaweeds infesting our beaches each year and government pay individuals to collect and throw into the bushes ...it could be used to produce animal feeds ...generic medications for both local use and export.......etc....DIto to the tons of BYCATCH fishes poured into the Coean on a dialy baisis by tuna sieners .....Luike Norway does ,government could pass law forcing tuna seiners to store the bycatch and bring them ashore ,,else face financial snactions or license cancelation ......(Nad how does Norway government ensure Tuna sieners really keep bycatch and bring it ashore ...?Well the passes law that force Tuan sieners to be equipped with CCP camery which port official uses to watch Live the actions go9ingon on these tuna seiners)---In a word ,seaweeds ,bycatch ..tunr into animal feeds would provide locals with all the feeds they need and would be enough left to even export...
The government should make less speaches but more actions.
We callin on Faure to take away our territories from GLENNY and let Seychellois produce food to feed the NAtion......instead of leasing to foreigners while Seychellois face shortage of food .........
TO
when you look at the cost to import tomatoes (a tropical fruits being imported form none tropical countries )reall<y hurt to see ..and the amount of money spend for import that otherwise our farmers would pockets then reinvest locally .....is simply disturbing......Dito to Chicken import from Brazil .........high cost to import while being bad quality prodcuts
If the agriculture minister feels that we cannot deliver then he should resign .......
I do the shopping for our restaurant, so I have come to have a keen eye on the rip offs ongoing by the Indian Merchant at Mas Supermarket Anse Kerlan. Sanken has left and price now soar.
Here is a break down-
Lettuce has gone from SCR. 10.00 to SCR. 15.00 per head. The heads are small, so he places it in a plastic bag so you do not see what you are buying. 50% increase in cost.
Pumpkin he buys for SCR. 20.00 per kilo from farmers and he sells at 45.00 per kilo.
Long beans - he buys for SCR. 30.00 per kilo from farmers, sells for SCR. 90.00 a kilo. Yes, SCR. 90.00 a kilo.
Local tomatoes - he buys at SCR. 20.00 a kilo and sells at SCR. 90.00 a kilo. I ask him why such a high price? He said they are from Sri Lanka. I told him, he will screw himself, not me.
Corn - he sells for 125.00 a kilo. 35.00 per kilo hire then STC.
Lemon he sells for 90.00 a kilo. STC sells for SCR. 40.00 per kilo.
The Seychelles government needs to call in the Hindi priests and tell them to go talk to their people. They cannot rip off the public like this.
Fair Trading needs to add some teeth to its mouth.
Sesel Pou Seselwa!
Christopher Gill
In Norway they been using seaweeds as chickens feeds since 1960,....in Seychelles we still collect them and throw into bushes ......raw natural resources wasted while we face shortage of animal feeds ......Well he do things in African style ..namely never capable to get things done properly ,with high standard ,be creative ,innovative ....always depending on others to get things done for us .......bad mentality and culture indeed....
When ii comes to FISh Discard Ban,Norway ahs been successfully practicing since 1980.......Why is it impossible for Seychelles?It seem because our officials are under qualified ,lack brain,incompetent,etc..
Indains are experts in screw customers .selling expired and bad quality stuffs ......
Ti si from Sir lanka ..he said ......whereby cost of production is 100 times lower than in Seychelles or Europe including transport .....the indain thug argument is baseless ..in fact ,Pl government should act aginst this unjustified price hikes ........These indains are just using this shortage to screw us and rob us ....Maybe Pl should start sending them back to indai and allow seychellpis to open shops .....for it is not only the unjustified price hike ,expired stuffs ,,,,,,the problems but also ki,l Seychellois job ,,create fianancial leakage ...all these affect Seychellois and Seychelles .....
Plö government has a rduty to make sure customers are not over charge ...thus government should take actions against these indain crooks .......
DId MR Faure spoke about putting Seychellois first?So go on ,do it guy.....after all Seychelles is for Seychellois.so empower Seychellois.
We all agree ,MR Faure has been delivering since he takes office ..but not really his ministers ...........It has been years now that I have been hearing about such things like: being food self sufficient ,renewable energy ,etc ,,but literally nothing have been done in a concrete and effective way that we can say there is a change and different in approach.....or in our daily lives....
Faure ministers are very weak. They all need to step up.
Some should not even be ministers like Mitsy......Mr Faure should pressure them or get rid of them ....
WE must buffer our country from volatility on wordl food market....while being mindful that as a small country with limited and non-fertile land we could not be 100 percent self sufficient,but we could a sufficient volume of domesdtic products .......
Governemnt should rapidly put a body in place to intervene and stop the aritificial price hikes by indain shopkeepers who are using the shortage of Tomatoes to bring price up artificial ,not only on tomatoes but all goods without justification....
Pl mported and gave indains control on our economy to finally screw us....
Faure said every person, who has a issue before any government. Office, must have an answer within 48 hours.
If they have not received a response in 48 hours, contact him, he will deal with them.
A tall order, but this is what the man said.
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