Price of bread goes up, again
The cost of bread has gone up again by Sh5 and Sh10 as bakers make a fresh attempt to pass the rising costs of cooking oil, fuel, wheat, and packaging to the consumer.
The rise in price, for the second time in as many months, comes at a time households are grappling with increased prices of basic commodities.
The price had gone up in January and April by the same margin.
Mini Bakeries, which owns the Supa Loaf brand, has raised the price of 400grammes bread to Sh60 from Sh55.
Broadways has indicated that it will increase the price of a 400g loaf in the coming days to Sh60 from Sh55 while the 600g type will go up from Sh83 to Sh90 with 800g hitting Sh110.
“The price of everything has gone up. We are grappling with the high cost of diesel on transport, expensive cooking oil, and an increase in packaging material, which is now up by 20 percent,” Broadway Managing Director Bimal Shah said as quoted by Business Daily.
Bread is a common staple on breakfast tables across the country, meaning that any price increase is keenly felt especially at a time when the cost of milk has also gone up.
The move comes barely a week after manufacturers of cooking oil in the country warned of increased prices due to a looming shortage of the commodity in the wake of Indonesia’s ban on palm oil exports. Indonesia accounts for a third of the world’s palm oil exports.
Although Kenya also imports vegetable oils such as sunflower oils, soybean, corn oil, and crude palm oil from Malaysia, floods and labor shortages in the Asian country have led to a weak production over the last six months.
At the same time, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has disrupted the global supply chain and created a scarcity of commodities such as wheat and fuel.
Russia and Ukraine supply Kenya with 66 percent of the total wheat consumed locally, and the conflict between them has created logistical challenges and export bans. Consequently, the prices of wheat have gone up by over Sh10,000 per metric tonne.
The increased charges comes two days after Uganda President Yoweri Museveni appeared to advice his citizens to look for alternatives of bread, including Mwogo (cassava) due to the high cost of the commodity.