AMMAN — Vegetable oil prices dropped in the local market, but it is hard to predict
reductions on other foodstuffs, said Khalil Haj Tawfiq, president of the
Amman Chamber of Commerce (ACC).
اضافة اعلان
“We hope that we will see a drop in the price of
other food commodities, but this cannot be predicted,” Tawfiq told
Jordan
News.
He attributed the
decline in the price of cooking oil on falling food prices globally. He
explained that “tax cuts offered by Indonesia on its exports of palm oil,
exports of sunflower oil from Ukraine, and the eased restrictions on exports
from that country resulted in a drop in vegetable oil prices globally.”
Today, many factories and traders “are losing
millions in oil prices because the stock is set at old prices.”
The ACC head said
that wheat prices have declined internationally, but that will have little
effect on bread prices locally because it is a subsidized commodity in Jordan.
Amman food store owners contended that the effect of
the global price decline is not yet felt domestically. They said the decrease in the price of
vegetable oil was insufficient to revive idle businesses caused by people
reducing their spending in the wake of price hikes.
The
UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
said in a report that the price of food commodities continued a downward trend
for the fifth consecutive month this year in August.
According to FAO, vegetable oil prices decreased by
3.3 percent, sugar by 2.1 percent, followed by dairy products by 2 percent.
Other items included meat, cereal, and rice.
FAO said that the decline in cereal prices
underlined improved production prospects in North America and Russia, and the
resumption of exports from Black Sea ports in Ukraine.
Jordan imports up to 98 percent of consumable items
from abroad, including essential commodities such as wheat, barley, sugar,
rice, and vegetable oil.
Earlier this year, Jordan announced that it will import 1.3
million tonnes of wheat in 2022-23, according to a Global Agricultural
Information Network report from the Foreign Agricultural Service of the US
Department of Agriculture.
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