Make fairer food pricing in Barbados a 2024 resolution for both government and the private sector, a consumer advocate declared.
Maureen Holder, the executive director of the Barbados Consumer Empowerment Network (BCEN), made the declaration on Tuesday in a press release on concerns surrounding food pricing.
She cited a brief from Consumers International (CI), a membership organisation for consumer groups around the world. In its 2023 brief, CI acknowledged that while much has been done nationally and internationally to facilitate fair pricing of food products on the consumer end, some industry stakeholders continue to record increased profits in the face of rising consumer costs and low wages for farmers and other similar workers.
“CI recognises that surging inflation in recent years has been triggered by external shocks such as conflict, climate crisis, and COVID-19, causing costs to rise for all marketplace actors,” Holder said.
“Yet, despite these rising costs, some actors have registered record profits, suggesting they may have taken advantage of these crises to increase food prices excessively and unfairly.”
She said that though the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Global Food Price Index shows that after hitting a record high in March 2022, prices of food commodities on international markets have been falling steadily, consumer prices continue to rise.
Executive Director of the Barbados Consumer Empowerment Network Maureen Holder.
Though she praised the government for its initiative in late 2022 and the first quarter of 2023 to address soaring food prices through policies and initiatives involving a basket of some 40 goods, that programme was discontinued with no replacement initiative being announced.
Given this state of affairs, Holder insisted on access to fairly priced food: “As BCEN reflects on the state of food prices in Barbados in 2023, it is evident that consumers have increasingly recognised the importance of having equitable and sustainable prices for food in Barbados. More importantly, the demand for fair prices from consumers in Barbados should be taken as a reflection of a broader societal awareness that consumers believe that they are not receiving value for money and that shrinkflation must be eradicated from the marketplace.”
The statement added: “Going forward, 2024 should underscore the need for continued and sustained efforts and collaboration aimed at ensuring that food prices remain fair and that prices on the whole are justified. This means that both government and the retail sector must bear some responsibility for ensuring that there is fair and ethical stewardship when it comes to ‘fair pricing practices’ in Barbados.” (SB)
