(the header is a little extreme - I know :P )

I remember at the start of 2008 someone said: “2008 will be a financially hard year” - what an understatement that was!

In the course of the past five months we’ve been hit with a global recession (primarily caused due to the American housing market), a credit crunch here in the UK (banks limiting the supply of money) and now panic buying of rice and other food commodities. My mother and were having a discussion a few days back about panic buying and whether we should go and participate in this frenzy. I in my ignorance decided not to. Today whilst out shopping I noticed that the price of a bag of rice was three quarters extra of the original price. The price of wheat has also significantly increased.

But why is this happening?

The answer lies in South-Asia. Countries such as Pakistan, India & Bangladesh have produced less supply than is required. This can be blamed to a number of factors such as poor weather conditions. With increasing inflation the governments have reduced exports in an effort to keep the local market price (domestic inflation) down.

Countries such as ours on the other end who depend on imports are now having to pay extra. The increase in food prices is not limited at just your local cash & carry but at restaurants (no real surprise) who are passing on the cost to consumers.

I can survive panic buying - I’m the proud owner of an organic allotment!

Panic buying is not just limited to just food, oil is also on the consumers shopping lists this season. Once again OPEC has decided to rip the world off with it’s oil prices. Large scale protesting by workers in Scotland and Nigeria have also contributed to the increase in oil prices. We all know that an increase in crude oil will also have an impact on the price on petrol. We would expect firms to have some sympathy for consumers in such horrid economic times but as always there is no sign of that happening anytime soon. Oil firms Royal Dutch Shell and BP have both announced better-than-expected first-quarter profits. Shell made profits of £3.9bn while rival BP saw its profits rise 48% to £3.31bn.

To buy list:

Here’s a few ideas on things which you may want to stock up on.

Rice, wheat, crude oil / diesel / petrol/ bio-fuel, canned foods - baked beans / tomatoes etc etc & olive oil. My top advice for surviving without struggling this year would be to plan for three-four month intervals. By doing this you will be making savings and helping to ease your total costs in the long run.