EL SALVADOR: Banging Empty Pots to Protest Food Prices

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http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41586

By Raúl Gutiérrez

SAN SALVADOR, Mar 13 (IPS) - Some 400 protesters beat onpots and pans and blew whistles outside the Central Reserve Bank of ElSalvador to protest the rise in prices of staple food items.

Im desperate, we cant take any more, Guadalupe López, who israising four children on her own, told IPS. Besides, we dont havejobs that pay us enough to support our children, to feed them and payfor their education.

Francisco Marroquín, 26, said the government should establish pricecontrols and raise the minimum wage, so that people can survive.Participants in Wednesdays pots and pans protest distributed leafletsdemanding government action to guarantee food sovereignty andsecurity.

A demonstration of this kind has not been seen in the Salvadorancapital since the 1980s, when rightwing womens groups protestedagainst the Christian Democratic government of then president NapoleónDuarte (1984-1989).

El Salvadors Consumer Defence Centre (CDC) said that betweenJanuary 2007 and January 2008, the retail price of beans has risen 68percent, in addition to price increases for rice (56.2 percent) andmaize (37.5 percent) all basic staples in the diets of poorSalvadoran households.

In the last few years, international market prices for commoditieslike these have risen steadily. In December 2007, the food price indexpublished by the British magazine The Economist reached its highestpoint since it was first calculated in 1845.

In nearly every country in Latin America, prices of many foodstuffshave risen by much more than the average increase in the consumer priceindex.

The rising trend in prices is not a result of scarcity. World foodproduction is rising, but not fast enough to cushion the effect ofincreased demand, which has two main causes: the boom in biofuels, andincreased food purchases by China and India, as a result of betterliving conditions for the people in those countries, according toexperts.

In El Salvador, the CDC study shows that wage increases have not kept up with price hikes.

In May 2004, the cost of the basic food basket in urban areas stoodat 128.19 dollars a month, while the minimum wage was 151.25 dollars amonth. But in January 2008, the food basket cost 159.90 dollars and theminimum wage was 162 dollars.

According to Armando Flores, the head of CDC, this is the result ofa market that isnt working for the people, and its due to the lack ofpolitical will to implement public policies to alleviate thesituation. He called on the government to regulate food prices.

Food prices are increasing by leaps and bounds, like a hare, and wages, like a tortoise, are being left behind, he said.

Economy Minister Yolanda de Gavidia has repeatedly declared that thehigh food prices are due to the high price of oil, and that there isnot much that can be done to halt the spiral, since El Salvador is notan oil producing country.

The government announced that inflation stood at five percent in2007, but private analysts and social activists cast doubts on thisfigure.

Carlos Acevedo, an economist with the United Nations DevelopmentProgramme (UNDP), said that the price increases for items in the basicbasket are substantially greater than the official statistics indicate.

In his view, the government should confront the problem byimporting products that have experienced considerable price increases,and raising incomes by means of policies involving private enterprisein the creation of more jobs with decent salaries.

Analysts estimate that remittances from the 2.9 million Salvadoranswho live abroad, mainly in the United States, are the main factorsaving the majority of the population from destitution. Last year,remittances totalled 3.6 billion dollars, equivalent to 18 percent ofgross domestic product, according to the Central Reserve Bank.

Sandra Guevara, the head of the Mélida Anaya Montes Womens Movement(MAM), said that price increases have a particularly devastating impacton women. Wages are not high enough to cover the basic needs of themajority. Many families have only one dollar a day to spend on the foodthey eat, she said. (END/2008)

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