Published on : 27/05/2022 – 00:42
In Kampala, as across the country, restaurants are changing the way they cook to cope with the general rise in the price of certain basic necessities, in particular oil. Report in a restaurant in Wandegeya, a popular district of the capital.
From our correspondent in Kampala,
In front of her restaurant, Goretti lights a charcoal fire to prepare the meals she will serve this afternoon. ” We cook local food: we prepare cassava, sweet potatoes, plantains, posho, rice and potatoes. »
In the pot, the different foods cook covered with banana leaves. Everything is boiled in water; for some time now, the restaurant has had to abandon certain dishes to avoid using cooking oil, the price of which has increased by more than 75% in one year.
« We cooked meat with a lot of oil, and the smell attracted customers. Now we cook the meat in water and tomato sauce, explains Jackline Kemigisha, one of the establishment’s cooks. It’s the same thing for rice and beans: we no longer cook fried rice, but just white rice, and we no longer put oil in the vegetables. »
A change in dishes and reduced portions to avoid increasing prices in the restaurant. But at lunchtime, the few tables set up remain almost empty.
« Now the customers are very few. Many are affected by the increase in petrol, and they are just recovering from the Covid period. Most of our customers are motorcycle taxis, some don’t come anymore, they only eat snacks. They don’t come anymore », Reports Jackline Kemigisha.
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The Uganda Bureau of Statistics recorded national inflation of 4.9% at the end of April, compared to the same period a year earlier. Since the beginning of the year, cooking oil, soap, gasoline, but other products have followed because of rising transport costs, according to Ibrahim Kasirye, director of the research center of Makerere University on Economic Policy.
And for the analyst, prices are likely to continue to rise. ” We are not yet fully observing the impact of the Ukrainian crisis. We expect to be affected by this conflict, because these two countries at war are very important producers of certain raw materials, such as sunflower oil for example, he points out. So we expect that at the end of June, prices will increase even more in Uganda. »
Wheat prices, of which 48% of Uganda’s imports come from Russia and Ukraine, have already increased significantly in the country.