Shopping for baby products in Dili August 25, 2011

It has been so long since I’ve posted on this blog – I’ve been carried away with spending time with my lovely Jessica (who will be turning one in a few days!) and transitioning into life as a working mom!

 

 

In this post I’m sharing some info on where to shop for baby products in Dili. I’ve touched upon baby formula in my previous post about Nestle’s NAN – thankfully ever since, I’ve discovered that it is much cheaper to buy NAN that is pacakged into a box (as opposed to a tin can): a can of NAN 2 would cost approximately $ 27-35 (USD , 900 mg) wherease a box (700mg) of the same product would cost about $15. I usually get the boxed ones from W4 (a supermarket located on Audian Street, not too far from the big roundabout and the Dili Convention Centre in Mercado Lama) but my friend gets them from Dili Mart, which is a wholesale supermarket located in Bidau.

 

I shop for most of my baby products at W4, as they carry a variety of baby products including diapers (Huggies, Pampers, Mamy Poko, EQ, etc.), formulas (Nestle NAN, Enfamil, Promil, etc.), wet wipes (Mitu baby, Cussons, etc.), bath products (Johnson & Johnson, Zwitsal, Cussons, etc.), you name it! They sell liquid detergents for baby clothes here (refill packets also available), as well as anti-mosquito lotion (non-DEET) from Johnson & Johnson’s. The prices for baby products are considerably lower here compared to other supermarkets like Lita and Landmark, which target foreigners. W4 is usually bursting with local Timorese shoppers and a few malaes (foreigners) like myself who have discovered its value!

 

On the other hand, W4 doesn’t have much baby food (bottled, canned) or snacks, so for these items I usually go to Lita Supermarket. They have a nice selection of bottled baby food (Heinz) and a variety of snacks (biscuits, teething rusks, etc.), which can also be found at their sister supermarket called Leader (on Comorro Road).

 

Baby bath tubs (plastic) are commonly sold in supermarkets and shops, and baby changing stations (for changing diapers) are sold at the Dili Aircon store in Colmera.  This shop carries quite a lot of  items, including baby cots, walkers, bouncers, etc. Saula and I even found and bought a car seat for Jessica at this shop!

 

So far I haven’t shopped much for toys since Jessica inherited heaps of them from her cousins in Korea, but my friend Gailynn seems to get nice ones from Jacinto Supermarket on Jacinto Road – blocks, puzzles, ring-toss games, etc. Jacinto also has lots of decorations and party items that can be used for childrens’ birthday parties.

 

Baby clothes are difficult to come by, especially if you’re looking for decent ones. They are sold in several clothing stores but 100% cotton products are hard to find – fabrics are quite coarse and mixed with nylon or polyester. Street stalls that sell clothes sometimes carry baby clothes, but you will find them only after much searching and sweating (and several mosquito bites on your legs, if you’re not careful)! I have never bought clothes for Jessica here in Dili – any chance I have to fly out and shop elsewhere I’ll make sure to procure enough items to last the next few months.

 

All in all – one can pretty much get the essential items for baby care/play in Dili. It’s just that you need to visit several different shops to get what you want/need and be prepared for the possibility that at certain times, certain items may be out of stock. Once you get acquainted with other moms around town, of course you can buy/sell or exchange items informally – recently someone was clearing house and I got a used baby cot for Jessica for free!  (She is enjoying her time bouncing and dancing around in that baby cot these days..) 🙂

Why is Nestle NAN (infant formula) so expensive in Timor? February 5, 2011

Since most grocery items are imported in Dili, pretty much everything is more expensive than elsewhere for expat shoppers.  But I think mothers will find it especially frustrating that baby products are quite costly.  Unlike other consumer items, baby products like diapers and infant formula are indispensable when raising a child.  We don’t have a wide range of choices, either. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         When I started giving infant formula to Jessica for the first time when she was 3 months old, a friend recommended Nestle’s NAN baby formula.  I found them available at the LITA store at US$ 35-40 and thought, gosh, this is rather expensive.  Still, the brand name was trustworthy, and these NAN products were imported either from Holland or Singapore.  There were several other products from other companies that manufactured theirs in Indonesia, so compared to them I figured formula manufactured in Europe or Singapore would have stricter quality control. 

As Jessica started growing rapidly and thus consumed each can at a faster pace, I changed my mind and switched to Enfamil A+, which is a product of the Mead Johnson pharmaceutical group in the United States.  Enfamil in Timor-Leste is imported from Indonesia, where Mead Johnson manufactures them locally.  A can of Enfamil costs about US$ 18-20 in Dili, which is almost half the price of Nestle NAN.  Thankfully Jessica didn’t have any trouble at all with the change of product and has been growing healthily ever since.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Several weeks ago I was doing a web search on import taxes in Timor due to another issue, and I came across some information that said while sales tax is 2.5% (it used to be 6% in the past) for all imported products, two categories of items are exempt from import duties: Baby formulas that are specially designed for babies under one year of age, and tampons and sanitary napkins.  If this information is still valid, that means all supermarkets are importing these two products duty-free.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 I then looked up the price of a can of Nestle NAN Pro 1 (900g, for 0-6 months) in Singapore, and discovered that it costs around SGD $28-30.  The current USD:SGD exchange rate is approximately 1:1.27, meaning that in USD this product should cost approximate US$ 21-23.  Compare that to the price tag on the exactly same product in Dili!!!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Sure, businesses need to make profit, but must they set such a large margin for this particular brand?  Especially if it is true that they don’t have to pay import tax for it?  I cannot speak regarding other brands because I only recall the price of Enfamil and Nestle NAN at the moment, maybe I’ll do my investigation on the other brands later.  🙂  As for Enfamil,  in Indonesia a can (800g) costs approx. RP 180,000, which is around US$ 20.  So the price of Enfamil in Dili is almost identical to that in Indonesia.  But this is not the case for Nestle NAN. 😦

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Maybe sometime in the future when I get to know more moms in Dili who are feeding their babies Nestle NAN imported from Singapore, I’ll get everyone to ask the supermarket managers to reduce the price by at least $4-5 dollars…