Told to me by a volume buyer of veg.: the board purchased a large volume of red and black beans which were of very inferior quality and no one wanted to buy them. Along comes a big stock of onions and the catch is you have to buy beans to be allowed to buy onions, that's when the shortage started as no one wanted the beans. Now, the board has to recover the cost of all those beans that they can't sell and lo and behold the price of onions skyrockets.
There Are Onions in Belize
posted (December 21, 2006)
Christmas cooking is right around the corner, and Belize's home-makers are panicked that onions will be scarce and as Belizean cooks know, you can't cook rice and beans without onions. The essential vegetable has been in scarce supply for the past month, but today the Marketing Board sent a release saying that just yesterday it received a container full of onions from Mexico. Those onions are now being distributed to retail suppliers countrywide, we caught a sight of these ones at the Queen Square market today.
But that's the good news, the bad news is that the prices are through the roof! The Marketing Board says it is wholesaling it for $1.90 a pound, but middlemen told us it's more like two dollars a pound. They then sell it for two-fifty a pound and your retail price is expected to be a whopping three dollars a pound. Most retailers we spoke to either already have the new onions or expect to get them in by tomorrow.
What's the cause for the spike in prices? According to the Marketing Board, there's a shortage in Mexico which has driven prices upwards.
AmbergrisCaye.com 
