Basic food index prices decreased slightly for the month of May

Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — After continued months of increases in certain food commodities in the territory, food price have finally decreased slightly for certain food items such as box of chicken legd, turkey taild and bottled water — while other commodities increased slightly, according to the May 2022 Basic Food Index (BFI) released last Friday by the Commerce Department’s Statistics and Analysis Division.

However, the DOC report points out that the trend in BFI and food cost continued to rapidly climb in the last 12 moths. An annual comparison of the current BFI to the same month of last year suggested that basic food costs had increased by 20.7% — a general month over month increase of 1.75 in the past 12 months.

For the month of May, the BFI there is a slight drop of 0.3% in the local cost of basic food items compared to April. For example, a 22 pounds box of chicken legs dropped by 3.9%, turkey tails dropped by 2.1%, fish decreased by 0.8% bottled water down 0.7%, spare ribs down 0.6%, taro dropped 0.4% and mayonnaise declined 0.2%.

On the other hand some food items went up including eggs, which significantly increased by 7.6%, corned beef up y 1.7%, rice costs increased up by 1.6%, fresh milk up 1.6% and sausage hiked by 1.4%.

Some consumers, contacted by Samoa News, appeared surprised with the decrease in prices for taro, boxes of chicken, spare ribs and especially a bottled water “which seems high even now in June”.

According to DOC, a total of 14 major to mid-size retail stores have been selected for monitoring basic food costs on Tutuila island from the westside to the east side.