Puzzle of skyrocketing food prices in spite of cheap imports

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National Assembly Trade Committee members inspect a shipment of rice at the KNTC warehouses. FILE PHOTO | POOL

Traders used the duty-free window to import in under six months quantities of rice equivalent to what Kenya normally ships in in a year, but still failed to cool the skyrocketing prices in the country.

Fresh data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) show that despite the increase in supply, retail prices of rice have barely gone down with a five kilogramme of the cereal nearly doubling from the beginning of the year.

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