Gabon: controversy over the price and size of baguette bread
Audio 01:25
In Gabon, soaring wheat prices on the international market caused a rise in the price of flour used to make baguettes (illustrative image).
AP - Michel Euler
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
In Gabon, the surge in wheat prices on the international market caused a rise in the price of flour.
The 50 kg bag of flour went from 16,000 to 19,000 CFA francs, an increase of 3,000 CFA francs.
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With our correspondent in Libreville,
Yves Laurent Goma
For more than a week, the bakers, following this increase in the price of flour, decided to increase the wholesale price of baguette bread, from 115 to 125 CFA francs, and to no longer ensure the distribution chopsticks at the shopkeepers.
Retailers, the last links in the chain, have started to sell this baguette at 150 CFA francs, which the government has categorically prohibited.
And what is the place of Gabonese consumers in this micmac?
“
Bread is complicated
”
After a week without a baguette in grocery stores, John lined up to buy his ten baguettes at the bakery: “
Me, I'm coming out of Bellevue.
I come to take the bread here.
This shows how complicated bread is
”.
It is now the gymnastics that you have to do to have a baguette because it has disappeared from neighborhood retailers.
Mohamed Buhari runs a grocery store at PK10: “
No.
The bread, they sell it at 125. You cannot take at 125 to sell at 125.
”
Difficulties in supplying baguettes are weighing on the business of Le Roi Service, owner of a small
fast-food restaurant
: “
To have customers, you need bread because customers like chicken bread.
So I'm penalized
."
A smaller loaf
After a week of hesitation, the bakers decided to make a smaller loaf sold at a wholesale price of 65 francs and consumers pay 75 francs for it: “
The long baguette, it is family.
The short wand is ingratitude.
She is unique
”
;
“
Even if we complain, who will listen to us
?
say
these consumers
.
Jabber Nguémbit, president of the bakers' union explains: "
Due to the increase in the bag of flour and in order not to go bankrupt and close our bakeries, we found it useful to reduce our expenses on transport and logistics
" .
Read also: Gabon: the rise in the price of a bag of flour to 19,000 CFA francs is the cause of the increase in the price of bread
The government persists and signs: no merchant should sell the baguette for more than 125 CFA francs.
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Gabon
Food