Malawi families feel the first easing in months

Grace Banda counted her tomatoes and, for once, didn’t wince. Twelve for the same price that had bought her only eight a month earlier. Small mercy — but a mercy all the same.

Malawi’s inflation eased to 23.4 per cent in May, down from 24.3 per cent in April, as new harvest supplies pushed food prices lower.

For traders like the one Grace buys from near Lilongwe, it meant a little more stock moving at a little less strain.

“Fuel isn’t pulling everything up the way it was,” he told her, packing her basket. It was the first time in months he hadn’t apologised for his prices.

At home, Grace’s son Thoko had taken to reading the newspaper his teacher left behind, chasing the inflation story the way other boys chase football scores.

He explained to his father, Bauleni, that the central bank had kept its policy rate steady at 24 per cent — not cutting, not raising, just watching.

“They want to see June and July too,” Thoko said. “One good month isn’t enough.”

Bauleni, who ran a maize mill often idled by thin rains, wasn’t ready to celebrate.

“A point down is still up,” he said. “Ask me again when oil doesn’t jump every time something happens far from here.”

It was a fair caution.

Officials had flagged global oil prices as the thread the whole recovery hung on — a rise past $110 a barrel could undo May’s gains just as quickly as they came.

Still, Grace folded her cloth around the tomatoes and allowed herself a small, careful hope. Not that the mountain was climbed. Just that they’d found, for now, a ledge to stand on.