Delivering the prestigious 28th annual Sir Arthur Lewis Memorial Lecture, renowned regional economist Professor Emeritus Andrew Downes laid out stark new data showing that the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) recorded a cumulative 26% rise in food and beverage prices across the four-year window spanning 2021 to 2025, a burden that is squeezing family budgets even as headline overall inflation rates in the bloc remain comparatively moderate.
Downes, who previously served as chairman of the CARICOM Competition Commission, emphasized that food costs sit at the very core of the ECCU’s ongoing cost-of-living crisis, as the category claims a disproportionately large share of average household spending and fulfills a non-negotiable basic human need. Data shared during his presentation showed that food and beverages make up roughly 19% of total household expenditure across the currency union, though he noted that the underlying survey dataset used for that expenditure metric is now somewhat outdated.
Crucially, Downes clarified that the 26% figure is a cumulative total increase for the full four-year period, not an annualized inflation rate, and that the statistic applies to the full ECCU bloc – which includes member states such as Antigua and Barbuda – rather than representing the exact price trajectory for any single individual member nation.
The veteran academic also highlighted a critical statistical disconnect that often confuses the general public: broad-based aggregate inflation readings frequently obscure far steeper, faster price hikes in essential targeted categories, which directly explains the widespread gap between official government economic data and the day-to-day financial strain ordinary households report experiencing. He outlined the harsh coping mechanisms many ECCU families are now forced to adopt to maintain their baseline standard of living: draining long-term savings, taking on high-interest consumer debt, taking on extra part-time or informal work hours, or downgrading to lower-quality, cheaper substitute goods. Low-income and socio-economically vulnerable households, he stressed, bear the brunt of this pressure far more acutely than wealthier demographic groups.
Downes traced the root of the region’s outsized exposure to global food price volatility to its structural overreliance on imported goods across the entire supply chain, including not just finished food products but also the fuel required for agricultural production, cross-country transportation networks, and daily supermarket operations. He broke down the full stacked cost components that end up embedded in final consumer grocery prices: international freight and cargo insurance fees, port handling levies, customs duties, assorted national and local consumption taxes, retail business operating overheads, and normal commercial profit margins for distributors and store operators.
Following Downes’ formal address, Eastern Caribbean Central Bank Governor Timothy Antoine stepped in to clarify a widely misunderstood point of macroeconomic terminology, reinforcing the critical distinction between a falling inflation rate and outright falling prices. Using the 26% cumulative food price rise as a concrete, relatable example, Antoine noted that a standard grocery basket that cost consumers $100 at the start of 2021 now costs $126 in 2025. A decline in the inflation rate, he emphasized, only means that the pace of future price growth will slow down, not that prices will ever revert back to the pre-2021 $100 baseline.
Downes’ landmark 28th Sir Arthur Lewis Memorial Lecture carried the official title “Competition, Regulation and the Caribbean’s Cost of Living Problem”, drawing hundreds of regional policymakers, economists, and community stakeholders to the annual flagship event honoring the legacy of the Caribbean’s most celebrated development economist.
Food and beverage prices rose 26% in Eastern Caribbean over four years, economist says
