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 Business News | January 2007 
Tortilla Price Hike Sparks Complaints
 El Universal
| | Traditional tortilla making. The mother is grinding the maize with a stone mano and metate as the elder daughter pats the dough into tortillas. (El Salvador, c. 1900) |
Economy Secretary Eduardo Sojo said Monday that recent increases in tortilla prices reflect several recent developments, including transport difficulties, harvest woes and increased demand from new uses of corn as a fuel source.
Tortilla prices went up to 10 pesos per kilo in some parts of the country over the weekend, sparking complaints from those who until recently were used to paying less than five pesos.
Industry officials blamed the rising price of corn. "Corn costs 100 percent more than it did a year ago," said Rafael Ortega Sánchez, director of the National Chamber of the Cornmeal and Tortilla Production Industry.
He also said that middlemen, such as distributors, are contributing to the tortilla inflation.
But, he said, tortilla prices in and around Mexico City are closer to seven or eight pesos a kilo. "In some out of the way places, however, it´s as high as 10," Ortega said.
In Nezahualcóyotl, a city of more than 2 million just east of Mexico City in the State of Mexico, a kilogram of tortillas was selling for 10 pesos on Sunday.
Meanwhile, federal legislators from across the political spectrum criticized the high tortilla prices, saying they hurt the poor the most. Senators José Guillermo Anaya Llamas of the National Action Party (PAN) and Graco Ramírez Garrido of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) both said they suspected that a federally mandated increase in gasoline prices, announced in November, was adding to the high tortilla costs.
Ortega Sánchez ruled out a return to government-controlled tortilla prices, but tortilla makers in Mexico City asked for federal action to control other basic costs they say are causing them to raise their prices. They said high gasoline costs are making them less competitive against the "disloyal competition" of the supermarkets, which sell tortillas at cheaper prices. |
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