Camille Clarke

Pres­i­dent of the Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion Ver­non Per­sad says there has been a no­table in­crease in sev­er­al food items and it is in the hands of con­sumers to re­ject price in­creas­es. Per­sad and oth­er mem­bers of the as­so­ci­a­tion yes­ter­day met with Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har to dis­cuss the is­sue of the rise in food prices at the min­istry on South Quay, Port-of-Spain.

"The Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion stands com­mit­ted to low­er food prices and we have been get­ting mem­os from our dis­trib­u­tors and sup­pli­ers about the rise," he said. Per­sad said there were hun­dreds of food items which prices had been in­creased over the past few months but the as­so­ci­a­tion's man­date was to stop the price-goug­ing.

He added: "We have tak­en a po­si­tion that we will not ac­cept any price in­creas­es from the dis­trib­u­tors. We want our cus­tomers to en­joy the ben­e­fit of that. "Stores can refuse de­liv­ery to show the lev­el of com­mit­ment and con­sumers can stop buy­ing the prod­ucts. We have all de­cid­ed to make this stand to­geth­er in favour of this move­ment."?

Per­sad said con­sumers could choose an­oth­er prod­uct with a low­er price. He added: "There has been an eval­u­a­tion of prices and there is a lot of im­por­ta­tion of food. There are a lot of prices go­ing up and con­sumers want the prices re­duced. We stand com­mit­ted to re­duce the prices from mov­ing up­wards."

Per­sad said there were a lot of con­tribut­ing fac­tors to the in­crease, such as the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket, lo­cal fac­tors, cost over­runs, rentals, freight charges and ad­di­tion­al costs which was passed on to con­sumers. He said VAT would be tak­en off over 7,000 items at the su­per­mar­kets from No­vem­ber 15.