Market vendors fear product prices could rise due to hurricanes

Sellers complain that they obtain a really low profit from the sales of their products…

MERIDA – The sellers at the Lucas de Galvez and San Benito markets said that they expect a 10% to 15% increase in fruit and vegetable prices for the next months.

They complained that after suffering natural phenomena, such as droughts, floods and cyclones, the providers tend to augment the prices of fruits, vegetables and legumes to the market sellers.

A seller said: “The fruits and vegetables keep their prices to the public, but what happens is that it is expensive for us because the distributors increase their prices by 10 to 20 percent alleging  problems due to droughts, floods or variations in the price of gasoline”.

She also commented that the tomato huacal (wooden box in which the regional producers put the vegetables and fruits) costs them $600 pesos and contains 20 to 25 kilograms. The sellers only can ask for $700 pesos for each huacal which makes them earn only $100 pesos, after selling the whole box.

She mentioned that the tangerine and the orange are at the same price as the mango because right now there is no local production, because the season was from October to January.

“The lime is super expensive since it is scarce. Although there is very good local production, they also bring it from the center of the country so it will surely raise the price more, until the local season starts,” she said.

The lime until last week was at $5 pesos each kilogram.

This situation may affect the prices of the products that are exported to the United States and those that we import from there.

Source: laverdadnoticias.com