Consumer goods go skyhigh

Reporter: Chai Sayam

Commodity prices in Rangoon have gone up at least 10% during the past week probably due to the skyrocketing fuel prices, according to sources coming to the border:

Cooking oil 1,800 kyat ($1.8) per viss (1 viss = 1.6kg) until very recently, is now over 2,000 kyat ($2). Pork and chicken are 3,000 kyat ($3) per viss.

Traders, faced with complaints from their customers, are blaming on the higher costs of transportation, while the delivery sector in turn is pointing fingers at the rising fuel prices.

The bus fare, 20 kyat ($0.02) until now, is in for a 150% increase, one of the bus drivers told S.H.A.N.

The government has been urging public transports to convert to CNG (compressed natural gas) systems with an offer of loans. The cost of conversion is 2.5 million kyat ($2,500) per vehicle.

As commodity prices surge, many denominations of the legal tender have become obsolete: first, the coins, then the 1-kyat notes. “There are still some 5-kyat bills here and there,” said a Rangoonian, “but nobody seems to know how to use them. Now the ten-kyat notes are fast going out of use.”

The basic unit of transaction from now on will be the 20-kyat note, he predicted.
The only price that remains unchanged is that of rice. “If it weren't for the junta’s warnings, the rice traders would have raised it skyhigh long ago,” said a government official.