Malis­sa Lara-Pat­ter­son

A stag­ger­ing $4bil­lion is spent an­nu­al­ly on se­cu­ri­ty, which is con­tribut­ing to es­ca­lat­ing food prices, says Pres­i­dent of the Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, Ver­non Per­sad. Com­ment­ing on the new­ly in­stalled Prices Coun­cil, Per­sad said the coun­cil should first find the cause of the prob­lem be­fore mov­ing to pub­lish any in­for­ma­tion. One of the in­struc­tions giv­en to the coun­cil is to pub­lish var­i­ous pos­si­ble prices of prod­ucts/goods tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion a rea­son­able prof­it mar­gin. Per­sad's $4 bil­lion es­ti­mate of an­nu­al se­cu­ri­ty costs cov­ers the food dis­tri­b­u­tion in­dus­try and not on­ly the coun­try's 300 plus su­per­mar­kets. He al­so con­sid­ered costs such as se­cure trans­porta­tion of goods and sur­veil­lance sys­tems. Per­sad said prof­i­teer­ing was one as­pect of the is­sue, but there were many un­nec­es­sary over­heads. "Crime is one of the un­nec­es­sary over­heads that hikes food prices as well. Al­so the in­fla­tion­ary ef­fects. At least 81 per cent of the food right now comes from abroad," he said.

He said hir­ing one armed guard costs busi­ness­es from $50 to $75 per hour, which means each busi­ness own­er could fork out be­tween $33,600 to $50,400 per month. This ranges from $403,200 to $604,800 per year for one busi­ness­place. The Sun­day Guardian was told that lo­cal­ly, one sur­veil­lance sys­tem could range be­tween $6,000 to $7,000. This in­cludes eight cam­eras, a mon­i­tor and DVR, plus there's a $3,000 labour cost. "That has to be borne by some­body. And who will have to pay for that cost? The cus­tomer," he ex­plained. Per­sad said the coun­cil will have to be care­ful and not give bad pub­lic­i­ty. "I am all for trans­paren­cy, but it must be trans­paren­cy with cor­rect in­for­ma­tion. In the past we've had sta­tis­tics be­ing pro­vid­ed by oth­er agen­cies which brought dis­re­pute to var­i­ous busi­ness­es. The in­for­ma­tion that was be­ing re­port­ed was not cor­rect." He said, "I think it is a good idea but there must be prop­er re­port­ing and prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion, be­fore pub­li­ca­tion."

He said dif­fer­ent busi­ness­es had dif­fer­ent price struc­tures and he drew ref­er­ence to those who were able to get bet­ter deals. Pe­ter Jack­son, Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent said his re­search has in­di­cat­ed price coun­cils do not work. They are a mea­sure for gov­ern­ment to con­trol in­fla­tion. He said in­fla­tion is a ma­jor prob­lem in T&T. "My re­search has in­di­cat­ed to me that when you are talk­ing about con­trol­ling prices and the Gov­ern­ment get­ting in­volved in con­trol­ling prices it is a very dan­ger­ous move," he said. "What you're do­ing is mess­ing with what prof­it a busi­ness­man can make. At the end of the day, the price of any good is con­trolled by the con­sumer," he said. He said while the As­so­ci­a­tion un­der­stood the need for putting mea­sures in place to reg­u­late in­fla­tion, he be­lieves the coun­cil is a ret­ro­grade step. He said the As­so­ci­a­tion could not give fur­ther com­ment on the sit­u­a­tion as no in­for­ma­tion was giv­en to them. He said there was a need to have more con­sul­ta­tion with busi­ness­men. Jack­son, too, said se­cu­ri­ty costs have been passed on to the con­sumer but not in full.

Pe­ter Kan­hai of the Tu­na­puna Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce said the Coun­cil should take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the ge­o­graph­ic lo­ca­tion of a busi­ness place which could in­flu­ence the cost of goods.

He hoped the Coun­cil would do some­thing com­pre­hen­sive. How­ev­er, he said, "I am not say­ing there are not busi­ness­es that are not prof­i­teer­ing." Kan­hai al­so said that the cost of do­ing busi­ness over the last few years has es­ca­lat­ed be­cause of se­cu­ri­ty. "Yes, the crime sit­u­a­tion has im­pact­ed the cost of do­ing busi­ness," he said. He said many busi­ness­es have had to in­stall their own pri­vate sur­veil­lance sys­tem.

"In the past, su­per­mar­kets at peak time may have gone for se­cu­ri­ty at high­er lev­el, now you have that all year round," he said.

Min­is­ter: Seek­ing the facts

For­mer Le­gal Af­fairs min­is­ter, Pe­ter Tay­lor start­ed a Prices Coun­cil in 2008 to mon­i­tor and to re­port on prices through­out the na­tion. How­ev­er, Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter, Prakash Ra­mad­har said the cur­rent coun­cil is fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from the one es­tab­lished un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion. "I tru­ly be­lieve be­fore any right de­ci­sions can be made, we need to know what the facts are, what the truth is," he said. "For too long we've been hear­ing about prof­i­teer­ing or black-mar­ket­ing in this coun­try." He said the ba­sic pur­pose of the coun­cil is to in­ves­tiga­tive what­ev­er is im­port­ed in­to T&T-not just food. He said the coun­cil would find out and source costs on the world mar­ket and im­por­ta­tion costs, while adding ex­tra costs such as trans­porta­tion and ship­ping charges. Af­ter this, the coun­cil would put a mod­er­ate prof­it mar­gin and then com­pare to what it ac­tu­al­ly sells at. "We are not against prof­it, but against ex­tor­tion," he said. He said as T&T is a price tak­er in the world mar­ket, the old time method of price fix­ing was out of ques­tion.

He said high­light­ing the prices would bring shame on guilty im­porters and en­cour­age oth­ers to im­port.

"Com­pe­ti­tion is what brings prices down," he said. Ra­mad­har said there have been ru­mours of op­er­a­tion of im­port and dis­tri­b­u­tion car­tels and the coun­cil will seek to dis­cov­er the truth. "We are not go­ing to call you a car­tel, we are go­ing to say that four im­porters are sell­ing at this price," he said. The min­is­ter said that busi­ness­men will have a chance ex­plain why their items are at a cer­tain price, be­fore the price is pub­lished. He said this would give busi­ness­men a fair op­por­tu­ni­ty. "What­ev­er is broad­cast or pub­lished will take in­to ac­count a rea­son­able prof­it mar­gin. All we want is for the facts to be out there so peo­ple will make prop­er de­ci­sions."