The high cost of living has become the talk of the town in Kuwait as the prices of consumables and products — whether food items, vegetables, fruits, meat, fish, or other consumer goods such as medicine, clothing, cleaning materials, stationery, school materials, etc have risen two-fold since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic making both ends meet difficult.
The Al-Anba daily after following up complaints in the social media about the rising prices visited different commercial activities across Kuwait to follow up on prices before and after the outbreak of the virus and discovered the huge discrepancies, some of which the consumers said were unwarranted while other feel the businessmen have taken undue advantage of the situation while control from the concerned authorities is clearly lacking.
While the consumers put the blame on the traders and business persons the latter point a finger at the goods exporting countries in the form of meeting the cost of completing procedures in all exporting countries, in addition to the costs of shipping and importing, as well as the significant rise in the rents of stalls and shops.