Fifteen months after the beginning of the health and economic crisis, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua are the economies in the region with the highest inflation rates, a behavior that was influenced by increases in fuel and transportation costs.
In the second quarter of 2020, a period in which the countries of the region were going through a severe economic crisis caused by the Covid-19 outbreak, inflation levels were low and in some economies negative variations were reported.
Government price freezes, which these days are seen as an option to maintain the price of basic goods in Honduras, always ends up hurting consumers.
The best solution to the problem is to "adopt policies to stimulate agricultural production."
The latter is what has been proposed in an editorial Tiempo.hn, after analyzing the Honduran executive’s decision to create a commission that will be responsible for presenting options to reduce the prices of the products that make up the basic basket.
Corn shortage is adding to the already existing shortage of bean. Escalating international prices are threatening millions of poor Central Americans.
January global data shows that food prices continue to rise and are already surpassing the 2008 prices.
And while the Central American economies are benefiting in part by the increase, for example by increasing revenues from coffee and sugar exports, they have not secured supply of basic traditional consumer products such as wheat, corn and beans; the basic foods of poor population. The already high prices are worsened by poor harvests due to bad weather.