Grocery Prices From Selected Supermarkets For The Month End Of September 2019

It’s the end of the month again and most people will be doing their shopping now. That is to the extent our very limited salaries and earnings will allow us. Prices have been going up every other day as compared to August when prices would go up every other week.

The month of September was characterised by a massive fall in the value of the Zimbabwean dollar. While it took the local dollar 7 months to lose 85% of its value since its introduction, by comparison by the last third Friday it had lost about 60% of its value since the beginning of September and was trading at close to $25 ZWL per each USD.

Naturally, this plus the constantly increasing fuel prices, has had an impact on the prices that supermarkets are charging.

The Prices Supermarkets are charging for groceries right now

Things to note

• As we have already pointed out, Supermarkets don’t seem to have 2l bottles of cooking oil at the moment except for FoodWorld
• There was a massive jump in the price of rice
• Royco and toothpaste are among the few products whose prices has not changed in weeks. In fact, at around $2.90, the price of Royco hasn’t changed in months
• Surf, Briliant and MAQ remain the cheapest washing powders, this is despite the fact that the last is imported. It shows there are issues when it comes to the way local industry continues to be uncompetitive and weighed down by overheads
• The price of peanut butter seems to have almost doubled in a week
• Mealie-meal supplies seem to have improved somewhat although the popular Red Seal brand remains missing from most shops. Continental Roller Meal and Continental Super Refined were the most dominant brands
• Ngwerewere by Blue Ribbon remains the cheapest Super Refined mealie-meal
• There seems to be a shortage of brown shoe polish!
• We included diapers here but you are better off buying these from wholesalers as the price difference, in this case, can be significant
• There was a massive jump in the price of Mazoe from around $20 to more than $30
• This was matched by the increase in the price of sugar