Prices probe on the cards

Central Bank Governor Cleviston Haynes has frowned on some merchants who are accused of taking advantage of customers during the COVID-19 pandemic by charging higher than usual prices.

However, stating that he was not an advocate of price controls, the economic advisor said he believed it should be up to firms to charge a “fair price”.

His comments came as he responded to questions from journalists on Thursday during a virtual media conference to review the past three months of Barbados’ economic activities.

The event came less than 24 hours after Prime Minister Mia Mottley announced that the Ministry of Commerce would be “drilling down” to find out why the higher-than-usual prices were occurring.

Insisting that now was the time for everyone to “work together to get through this period”, Haynes advised merchants not to take advantage of customers.

“To the extent that there are anecdotal stories that there are persons raising prices unduly, I think it is a practice that needs to be stopped,” he said.

“More generally, I am not a fond advocate of price controls because price controls are very difficult to implement because each firm does not acquire its goods at the same price. Often you are impacted by the volumes of the goods that you are buying, but certainly you do have mark-ups that you apply, and therefore one would like to think that firms are not going to apply excessive mark-ups to the items they have for sale at this point,” said Haynes.

Several accounts from individuals have emerged especially over the past two weeks, of prices that were higher than what was paid for similar items only a few weeks or days before.

Discouraging such practice, Haynes warned merchants to think carefully about the kind of profits they seek.

“The more that you do it you probably are going to shoot yourself in the foot because the more of person’s income you take away now, the less that is going to be available for them in the future.”

On Wednesday night during an address to the nation, Prime Minister Mia Mottley also pleaded with merchants not to engage in price gouging.

Calling on households to continue to be vigilant for such a practice, Mottley said she did not want to impose any mandates “but if we have to go there to guarantee that every house in Barbados has access to food at affordable prices then this Government will not blink”.

She said: “It is against this background that the Ministry of Commerce must now drill down even further and look into retail prices versus wholesale and imported price, to begin to understand where the problems of increased pricing can truly be found as we are seeing by persons in this day and age, bringing forward their receipts to be able to show the differences in prices over a short period of time.”
marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb