By Mabinty M. Kamara
The rapid rise in the prices of pepper in the market has raised concerns in the general public, particularly among housewives.
Prices for the different varieties of the spicing ingredient, which three months back cost at most Le2000, now cost at least Le5, 000 per cup. Some varieties are as Le7, 000 per cup.
Pepper, which is popular across many parts of the world, is one of the most important ingredients in many Sierra Leonean dishes, as many people hardly enjoy a meal without the spice in it.
Most of the pepper consumed in the country is produced locally, with a few amount imported from neighboring Mali.
At Le5, 000 per cup, which is equivalent to US50 cent, pepper is two and the half times more expensive than a cup of rice, the country’s main staple food.
This reality has added more economic burden on majority poor families who now need to spend extra to get their desired taste. Many such people will have to either add money or cut down on other ingredients.
For housewife Halima Tarawalie, the increase in the price of pepper has made shopping very difficult.
“My husband does not understand the situation in the market, so I cannot even convince him to increase the money from Le30, 000, which is for two days meal. And I cannot blame him because we have other issues to address and he is just a trader who relies on the little profit he makes in a day,” Tarawalie told Politico as she negotiated her way through Dove Cot, one of Freetown’s popular markets.
Fatmata Suma, another housewife, was shopping at the Kroo Town Road Market when Politico caught up with her. She said while increment in pepper price has been happening every year, she doesn’t understand the rationale behind this year’s increment as it happened with not scarcity of the commodity, unlike in previous years.
“Now I buy only two thousand Leone (Le2000) pepper because that’s what I can afford. Although we can barely feel it in the food. But it’s better than nothing,” she said.
A Le2, 000 worth of pepper is just a pinch of it, which some of the traders sell to people who cannot afford the cup.
Nafisatu Koroma, a trader at the Kroo Town Road Market, said selling pepper at the current price is the only way out for them as business people, noting that they were also buying it at a high cost from the producers. She said the cost is so high that some of them cannot afford to buy by bag.
“This issue is not only affecting the consumers, but also us as business people. Imagine something you used to buy for between Le400, 000 and Le600, 000, now is over Le1million. What would you do if you are to stay in the business,” she asked, rhetorically.
“Most of the other people cannot even dare to buy the bag because it is possible that you might not even get your money back after sales. So they prefer to buy by cup. That way they are assured of making at least Le500.00 to Le1, 000 per cup,” he said.
Sheka Sankoh has been in the business of selling dry pepper, groundnut and other cooking ingredients imported from Mali, Guinea and The Gambia for over two decades. He told Politico that the cause of the current hike in the prices of pepper couldn’t be unconnected to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sankoh said there will always be scarcity of fresh pepper when it’s planting season, but that the dried one have always been there to fill in the gap for the period. He however noted that with the COVID restrictions, people hardly travel to other countries where they used to import goods from, hence both the dry pepper and fresh Pepper have become expensive.
“By this time we used to have enough dry pepper in the market. So if you cannot afford to buy the ‘raw’ one, you can buy the dry pepper, which many do not like because of the seeds, but they do buy it. But this year, everything is difficult. The farmers said their peppers perished in the bushes during the lockdowns. So now, the few that they have, they sell at high prices. It’s not that the Pepper is scarce, but it’s just expensive,” he explained.
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