If you shop around often you'll find that some stores tend to sell certain products cheaper than others. But according to a press release issued by The Statistical Institute of Belize, The cost of living may actually be cheaper in certain areas of the country compared to a municipality, like Belmopan for example. This is because certain product prices may be going up faster than in other areas. And so today The Director General for SIB walked us through their inflation and explained why. Jomarie Lanza has this report.
Have you ever considered that shopping in another district for groceries and other essentials may be cheaper in one municipality than another? In a report published by SIB on Inflation rates for select major categories in December of 2024 show that there has been a 2.6% increase on personal care, social protection and miscellaneous goods and services. And as a result of this, in December of 2024, Belmopan was named the municipality with the highest inflation rate, at 4.9%.
Diana Castillo, the Director General for SIB explained how their team gathered the data to prove this.
Diana Castillo, Director General, SIB
"So we have a monthly survey, a consumer price Index survey where we visit hundreds of stores across the country, we include 9 municipalities, so The two cities, The towns and then we also include a couple of The larger villages such as Independence, in our data collection. We have a list of several hundred products that we collect prices for monthly and so we collect prices for these items every month and we monitor how those prices change over time."
"Food Prices have been rising and we have seen that over the past couple of years at least inflation in food has been the biggest contributor to the inflation rate in general. So while right now The inflation rate on average is 2.6% for food specifically it is closer to 5% and that just means that prices for food are rising at a faster rate than prices for other products."
"You know that we import a lot of our food products and so whatever is the trend in terms of prices in The places where we are importing from we will tend to import some of that but even for food products that we produce here in Belize, a lot of The inputs into these food products for examples, fresh produce or meats, The inputs that go into producing these products The cost of those inputs have been increasing and so over the past few years we have seen prices go up for locally produced goods as well."
By continuously measuring the prices of products over time, it's easy to track how certain product prices are rising faster than others, like in Belmopan for example.
Diana Castillo, Director General, SIB
"First of all I think it is important to note that The inflation rate which is The rate of change or how fast prices are rising is different from The general price level in a municipality so at This time we don't publish any measures of The general price level this is something that my team and I are looking at, for example starting to produce average prices for a basic set of goods by municipality which would give a better idea of the general price level in that municipality so you can have a municipality where price levels are very high but They don't move a lot and their inflation rate will be low or conversely you can have a municipality where prices are relatively lower, but between last year and this year They have changed a lot and so they have a high inflation rate, so that is one thing. There is a difference between The price level where it is expensive to live and the inflation rate and how much prices have changed since last year this time. The other thing though is yes we have observed that Belmopan has had The highest, or one of The highest inflation rates by municipality for several months now. And one of The things that we find is that Belmopan has consistently for The past few months we have seen that the rate at which food prices and rent prices have increased is above The national average so wherever prices for certain products are increasing faster than The national average those municipalities have a higher inflation rate than The national average and That's what we see Belmopan, it has driven a great deal of by food prices and rent prices which have been rising faster than The national average."
Now compared to Independence village which has the lowest rate at 0.2%, we see that food and rent prices have increased at a slower rate compared to other municipalities. And if you're wondering how much higher it can get or if there will be a drop soon in your municipality's inflation rate, Castillo says that in monitoring the trends, there is a possibility that some prices may begin to go down.
Diana Castillo, Director General, SIB
"Well just based on The trends we have observed since last year we are still seeing rising prices but it is rising at a slower rate whereas prices were rising much more rapidly about 2 years ago that has started to slow down. We see that food prices, while they are still going up. The inflation for that is also slowing down. We have seen that fuel prices have come down at least between last year and around this time this year. Motor Vehicle fuel prices have come down and those are always some of the key drivers of inflation and so if we continue to see for example inflation in food slowing down fuel prices stay where they are now or fall a little bit lower then we can expect that inflation will continue to slow down and eventually we will probably return to where we have been used to which is somewhere around 1% or a little less which is historically where out inflation rate has been."
We're told that because of the lower prices, it's not unusual for Placencia resident to skip across to Independence to shop.
