The much-an­tic­i­pat­ed re­moval of Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) on 4,000 food items did not im­press shop­pers, who com­plained yes­ter­day of see­ing lit­tle change in their food bills. At the JTA Su­per­mar­ket, Cross Cross­ing, San Fer­nan­do, work­ers were still chang­ing price tags on jars of pick­les, pep­per, kuchela and bar­be­cue sauces.

Prod­uct clerk Liz Bur­ton said the new prices were print­ed on yel­low la­bels so cus­tomers could dif­fer­en­ti­ate them. She said: "We want shop­pers to see the re­duc­tion. That is why we are us­ing yel­low tags in­stead of the reg­u­lar white tags."

Cus­tomer Trevor An­drews, who spent $1,089 on gro­ceries, said he was not im­pressed with the price changes be­cause they did not re­duce his food bill. "There are many items which they said VAT will be re­moved (from) and we have not seen a re­duc­tion," An­drews said.

How­ev­er, as­sis­tant man­ag­er of JTA Stephanie Mc Burnie said ma­jor food items, like rice, flour and milk, were al­ready VAT-free. How­ev­er, she said some peo­ple had a mis­tak­en per­cep­tion that prices were in­creased short­ly be­fore No­vem­ber 15. "This is far from the truth. We are re­mov­ing the VAT on hun­dreds of items, so cus­tomers will see a dif­fer­ence," she said.

Mean­while, own­er of Per­sad's D Food King Anand Per­sad said there was no crowd of shop­pers yes­ter­day. "We are see­ing the same reg­u­lar in­flux of peo­ple. Many are pur­chas­ing canned peas and juices, sea­soned ham and ce­re­al. Spreads like may­on­naise are al­so sell­ing and peo­ple are ap­pre­ci­at­ing the low­er prices they are see­ing on shelves," Per­sad said.

He said work­ers spent more than 36 hours prepar­ing the shelves with the new prices. "I per­son­al­ly went to all eight stores to en­sure the prices on the com­put­ers were up­grad­ed. He said many shop­pers were cross-check­ing prices. At the MS Food City Su­per­mar­ket, Debe, man­ag­er Nick Har­riper­sad said his staff worked tire­less­ly to en­sure the new prices took ef­fect.