In two weeks, the coun­try will be told how the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to help cit­i­zens cope with the in­crease in flour prices.

In the in­ter­im, Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon has ap­pealed to re­tail­ers to stop price goug­ing.

Speak­ing dur­ing a post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s yes­ter­day, Gopee-Scoon said some of the cur­rent prices on the shelves were un­ac­cept­able.

“I do make a strong ap­peal to the re­tail­ers, in par­tic­u­lar, the 40 and 60 per cent mark-ups we are see­ing on very ba­sic items, un­ac­cept­able, un­ac­cept­able, be­cause there are su­per­mar­kets that are do­ing mark-ups by 25 per cent I know on ba­sic items and some­times low­er,” Gopee-Scoon said.

“We ask them not to be un­con­scionable, this is a time of cri­sis in food se­cu­ri­ty for the world, not just Trinidad and To­ba­go,” she added.

But while she sent out the ap­peal, Gopee-Scoon ad­mit­ted there was lit­tle the Gov­ern­ment could do to those who choose to ig­nore the call.

She said the Con­sumer Af­fairs Di­vi­sion will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor prices on su­per­mar­ket shelves and if price goug­ing con­tin­ues, she will name and shame those un­scrupu­lous re­tail­ers.

Quizzed about why the Gov­ern­ment does not im­ple­ment a price-con­trol mech­a­nism, Gopee-Scoon said this had not been done in the sev­en years since the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) took of­fice.

“I don’t think it might be nec­es­sary, we would con­tin­ue to use in­flu­ence and, of course, con­tin­ue to have dis­cus­sions. As I said, name, Con­sumer Af­fairs would give the in­for­ma­tion where it is avail­able, con­sumers would have the pow­er of de­cid­ing where they’re go­ing to buy. I don’t think we would come to that place that we left off so many years ago,” Gopee-Scoon said.

As for those cit­i­zens who are strug­gling to cope with the ris­ing cost of liv­ing, Gopee-Scoon promised to come back with­in two weeks with a so­lu­tion.

“At this stage, we re­alise that we have to try to as­sist, es­pe­cial­ly with this very ba­sic item, the Min­istry of Fi­nance, the rest of the Gov­ern­ment, the Cab­i­net, we are re­view­ing what the pos­si­bil­i­ties are but un­der­stand­ing the com­plex­i­ties in de­ter­min­ing what’s the right so­lu­tion,” she said.

Gopee-Scoon said among the ideas the Gov­ern­ment had con­sid­ered so far was sub­si­dis­ing the op­er­a­tions of the Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM). How­ev­er, she said with a pri­vate flour pro­duc­er op­er­at­ing on the mar­ket, that idea had been dis­card­ed.

She al­so of­fered some in­sight in­to oth­er op­tions that had been shelved.

“It’s very easy to say let’s go to those who re­ceive so­cial de­vel­op­ment as­sis­tance but that’s a nar­row net be­cause many, many more house­holds are in fact feel­ing the pinch with this in­crease in flour which is a re­al­ly ba­sic item.”

She al­so sent out a call to con­sumers, say­ing with the price of flour in­creas­ing, they should con­sid­er al­ter­na­tives to their di­ets, es­pe­cial­ly with the high in­ci­dents of non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases (NCDs) in T&T.

“This calls for some in­tro­spec­tion on your spend, how you eat, your welling of your­selves, of your fam­i­lies. We have a se­ri­ous is­sue of NCDs in Trinidad and To­ba­go, per­haps it’s al­most a bit of a wake-up call, am I eat­ing the right thing? In the right amounts? Let’s think about these things as well,” she said.

As she sought to as­sure the pop­u­la­tion that NFM will be able to sup­ply flour to the coun­try for the rest of the year, Gopee-Scoon ex­plained that de­spite the word­ing, the wheat was not ac­tu­al­ly in stock.

“I want to clar­i­fy some­thing, the grain is not in stock be­cause peo­ple are say­ing why are the prices in­creas­ing if the grain is in stock? It is not that, what they’ve en­gaged in is for­ward buy­ing, both NFM and the oth­er lo­cal pro­duc­er and as you know, be­cause of the risk in­volved in for­ward buy­ing, it is at an even heav­ier price,” she said.

Gopee-Scoon said the Gov­ern­ment had put pres­sure on NFM to source al­ter­na­tive wheat types and low­er-cost sup­pli­ers.

How­ev­er, she said the qual­i­ty, con­sis­ten­cy and pro­tein val­ue of the al­ter­na­tives were low­er than what this coun­try cur­rent­ly pro­duces, so that av­enue was not pur­sued.

On June 21, the Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM) an­nounced that due to the on­go­ing war be­tween Rus­sia and Ukraine, wheat im­ports were slow­ing down glob­al­ly and some wheat-pro­duc­ing na­tions had halt­ed ex­ports.

The com­pa­ny said al­though it had an ad­e­quate sup­ply of wheat for the rest of 2022, it would be forced to in­crease the whole­sale and re­tail prices of flour. The whole­sale price was in­creased by 33 per cent and the re­tail price was in­creased by 28 per cent. Both in­creas­es went in­to ef­fect on June 22. Al­so on June 22, the Nu­trim­ix Flour Mills an­nounced it would in­crease the cost of its flour prod­ucts by ten to 33 per cent.