Peter Taylor

The Government has seen success in bringing down prices of basic food items, but persistently higher prices on meats and edible oil products still pose a challenge, says Legal Affairs Minister Peter Taylor. “Since our first announcement of a plan to deal with the high price of basic food items, the price of milk has dropped by nearly 50 per cent, as well as other food items,” he said. “Distributors have largely heeded the call, and milk distributors, in particular, have announced significant price reductions over the past few weeks.” Taylor said the next interest group the Government would be engaging would be the T&T Manufacturers Association (TTMA).

He said the Ministry of Legal Affairs had already conducted its initial meeting with TTMA president Greig Laughlin to share information, voice concerns and listen to suggestions they might both have, to deal with lowering food prices. Taylor was speaking at yesterday’s post-Cabinet press conference that was held at the Diplomatic Centre, St Ann’s. He said much of the food and basic items that consumers purchased were produced or processed by the manufacturing community, and the Government was looking at ways to provide support, as well as review manufacturers’ business strategy to ensure they could be sustainable, efficient, keep input costs down and eventually pass those benefits on to consumers.

Taylor said he was pleased that distributors and retailers, such as members of the Supermarkets Association of T&T, were calling for price reductions and most of them were passing on savings to consumers. Taylor downplayed claims by consumer activists that distributors had been changing the sizes of their packages in order to manipulate the prices of their products, noting that surveys undertaken by his ministry had shown no changes in packaging, and they had not received complaints about packaging from the public and interest groups. He admitted the Ministry of Legal Affairs did not have the resources to police and monitor all retail outlets, but he expected competition to keep prices down as distributors and retailers who insisted on maintaining higher prices would suffer from lower sales.