The price of bread is expected to go up again as a result of rising production costs. Last year, the price of bread rose three times, from 90 cents to $1,10 before shooting to $1,40.
In November 2018, Bakers unilaterally increased the price of bread to $2,20 a loaf and the government intervened to reverse the move.
The latest move is being pushed by the National Bakers’ Association of Zimbabwe (NBAZ). NBAZ vice-president Lucky Zinyama said that the RBZ is failing to meet their foreign currency requirements, He said:
We are currently getting pressure from our members, who are saying the cost of producing bread has gone (up) and they want to increase the bread prices. The major challenge now is forex, which is not available. Now, our members will have to go (to) the parallel market.
The initial agreement was that we get 80% allocation from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, but now we are getting just 30% of that. The difference, we have to source on other markets. So our members are giving us pressure to hike prices.
The government announced that effective January 1, bakers will import raw materials duty-free. The bakers, however, bemoaned the unavailability of foreign currency. NBAZ president Ngoni Mazango has this to say:
The biggest issue is not about free duty, but it’s the access to forex itself. Duty is a small component of our problem. Of cause, we appreciate the effort, but at the moment, we can’t get forex to import our raw materials.