THE National Milling Company of Guyana Inc. (NAMILCO) has increased its flour price with effect from today.

Addressing the media at NAMILCO at Agricola, East Bank Demerara, Managing Director of NAMILCO, Mr. Bert Sukhai, said since January 2007, wheat prices have increased by 120 percent, while flour prices have increased only by 60 percent.

This has caused us to suffer losses as other factors constrained us from further increasing our price. Other countries in the Caribbean increased prices at the beginning of April,” he contended.

To support his point, he displayed a chart indicating that Guyana was below other Caribbean countries in terms of prices to consumers.

…this is as a result of our commitment not to increase prices since March, so we were lagging.

We have heard that the wheat crops this year in Canada and the United States of America (USA) are good, and this will result in reduced wheat prices; but we would not benefit from this until September.

In meantime, we are forced to increase prices by approximately 25 percent to cushion the high prices paid for the last and the next shipment of wheat,” he explained.

?We are all well aware and concerned about the worldwide rising cost of grains, including wheat, and its impact on many countries,” he said.

Guyana is no exception, as we have seen prices of basic commodities such as milk, peas, cheese and rice increase as a result of several factors, including land used for growing wheat being switched to corn for the production bio-fuels; adverse weather conditions; large economies such as India and China consuming more wheat- based foods,” he outlined.

These factors are out of our control and while we are taking steps daily to mitigate some of these increases, we cannot continue to hold prices steady; and unlike other countries in the region, our increases were not as frequent,” he posited.

Until recently, 45 kg Thunderbolt flour was selling for $6,000, but the new price will rise to $7,500; the 22.5 kg will move from $3075 to $3825; and the one kg from $150 to $185.

Other products such as self-rising flour will increase by 13.84 percent; roti-mix by 13.74 percent and wheat by 25 percent.

He recalled that the last price increase in Guyana was on March 3, and before that in October last year.

We have lately been making some losses and this is what we are trying to curb right now…we can no longer hold our prices,” he explained.

This price increase is hopefully for a period of at least four months…we know what we are going to be buying wheat at for the next two shipments and based on that we are setting our prices…prices would not be going up during that time,” he pointed out.

The critical thing right now is not just prices but availability…wheat has become very scarce,” Sukhai emphasized.

He said the availability of flour is more of a critical issue, but the company has assured supplies by booking ahead, so there would not be a possibility of flour running short in Guyana.

?s soon as we get a lower wheat cost… we will bring down our prices,” he assured.

We couldn’t increase our prices for two months…during that time a lot of people out of Guyana were coming to buy flour here,” he noted.

He said another issue affecting their profits was Trinidad selling flour here below the prices in Trinidad.

We had to keep our prices low to stay in the market and as a result of that we lost money,” he noted.

We are now taking the step of increasing our prices in order to make at least some recovery,” the Managing Director said.