Last week the Sowetan published an article focusing on cooking oil prices. The issue has been on many people’s mind as we go through this extremely difficult economic period amidst the coronavirus pandemic. 27-year-old junior journalist at the Sowetan, Karabo Ledwaba, started with an internship in 2018, and had a particular focus on business reporting and feature writing. In 2019 she won the Vodacom young journalist of the year award. She said that most consumers must have noticed, while grocery shopping that oil prices have increased. According to Ledwaba, agricultural economists say that cooking oil prices have gone up by over 70% in the past year. She said that sunflower oil had gone up by 79.2%, and canola oil by 50.6%. The reason for these price hikes is that South Africa is a net importer of vegetable oil, as it does not produce sufficient produce to supply the demand within the country. Ledwaba said, “So, the pricing in South Africa is imports parity based on what is happening internationally, and internationally, there have been poor crops in regions such as Southeast Asia, Europe, and South America, due to climate conditions.”  She said, “This has led to a slightly lower supply being available internationally due to the poorer yields.” She further said that there’s also been a growing consumption of oil within the population as a whole, which has seen a growing demand for cooking oil. Ledwaba said, “all of these prices move in sequence, agricultural economists have said that if something happens to sunflower seed oil, then those prices will affect canola oil, will affect oil that we have from soy, and olive oil.”

In an example of how the poor were impacted by the price hikes regarding cooking oil, Ledwaba said she had gone to Soweto and Thembisa, and had spoken to women who were selling vegetables on the side of the road. She said one woman told her that she was unable to afford fast food, as a treat for her children, so, she would buy potatoes and fry chips for them once in a while. However, she could not even afford that anymore as not only has the price of cooking oil drastically increased, but so has the price of electricity, potatoes and everything else. Ledwaba said, “people are really already battling to survive out there.”

As to alternatives or ways in which the government could bring the price of cooking oil down, Ledwaba said that she had spoken to some economists that have said that in other countries, when staple food prices spiked as high as we are witnessing, the government tends to cover the burden for the poor, but that this does not seem to occurred in South Africa. She said that another option in South Africa would be to increase the grant pay outs, but that hasn’t necessarily happened yet either. She said that that, however, seems unlikely to take place.

On a positive note, Ledwaba said prices were expected to decrease by September, depending, however, on whether the crops improved.

Umm Muhammed Umar