Tremaine So­ca Warn­er

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar caused a stir yes­ter­day when she went shop­ping at the Xtra Foods Su­per­mar­ket in Grand Bazaar to see for her­self how the re­moval of the 15 per cent Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) was af­fect­ing con­sumers' gro­cery bills.

She was ac­com­pa­nied by Min­is­ter of Trade, In­dus­try and In­vest­ment Vas­ant Bharath, Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har and pres­i­dent of the Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion Ver­non Per­sad. The group ar­rived short­ly be­fore 3 pm and was met by a large crowd of me­dia per­son­nel, Xtra Foods em­ploy­ees and cu­ri­ous cus­tomers at the su­per­mar­ket's en­trance.

Own­er of Xtra Foods Su­per­mar­ket Anon Naipaul was al­so present to greet the PM who was led in­to the su­per­mar­ket by her se­cu­ri­ty de­tail be­fore pick­ing up a shop­ping bas­ket. The su­per­mar­ket's shelves dis­played la­bels which al­lowed cus­tomers to make note of the amount be­ing saved on each item as a re­sult of the re­moval of Val­ue Added Tax (VAT). Green la­bels showed the prices as they were pre­vi­ous­ly (with the 15 per cent VAT) where­as yel­low la­bels showed the ze­ro-rat­ed prices.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so stopped in the aisles to ob­serve the price tags on items in­clud­ing car­tons of juice, ce­re­al, dairy prod­ucts, condi­ments and meat. In Sep­tem­ber, Per­sad-Bisses­sar promised that by No­vem­ber 15 VAT would be re­moved from close to 4,000 food items with the ex­cep­tion of al­co­hol and lux­u­ry goods.

Naipaul as­sured her that by yes­ter­day 90 per cent of la­bels on new VAT-free items re­flect­ed the re­duced prices. He said al­though some la­bels had not yet been changed, the new prices were made in su­per­mar­ket's com­put­er sys­tem and vis­i­ble at the cash reg­is­ters.

As she packed her bas­ket, many cus­tomers gath­ered around the PM wish­ing to take pho­tos or to in­ter­act with her. She stopped at the frozen-foods aisle to speak briefly with some cus­tomers, say­ing she hoped they were pleased with the VAT?re­moval and the ex­pect­ed ef­fect on their gro­cery bills.

Af­ter sur­vey­ing most of the aisles, Per­sad-Bisses­sar took her bas­ket to a cash reg­is­ter with Ra­mad­har and Bharath in tow to help un­pack her items, which in­clud­ed bot­tled peanuts, chan­na, raisin bran, may­on­naise, grape­fruit juice, canned corn and frozen chick­en wings.

She had trou­ble pay­ing for her pur­chas­es at first, as the reg­is­ter mal­func­tioned. She said she was pleased with the la­belling method and en­cour­aged all gro­ceries to do the same. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said this was just one mea­sure her gov­ern­ment was im­ple­ment­ing to bring down food prices. She said an­oth­er method be­ing looked in­to is the re­moval of du­ty, which she said was a more long-term one since it will im­pact on Cari­com neigh­bours with re­gard to the Com­mon Ex­ter­nal Tar­iff (CET).

She said Gov­ern­ment hoped to re­move du­ties on ba­sic items like rice, flour and sug­ar which are al­ready VAT-free but still weighed heav­i­ly on con­sumers' pock­ets. Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so said the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture and Food Pro­duc­tion De­vant Ma­haraj is cur­rent­ly out of the coun­try pur­su­ing an ini­tia­tive for T&T to grow food in Guyana, which has a lot more land avail­able for agri­cul­ture.

She said the next step along the re­moval of VAT on items will be for the Con­sumer Af­fairs Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs and Prices Coun­cil to keep mon­i­tor­ing the prices in su­per­mar­kets to en­sure no sud­den or un­ex­plained in­creas­es oc­cur.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was im­pressed to see the range of lo­cal prod­ucts that have been af­fect­ed by the re­moval of VAT. She al­so spoke about the ben­e­fits of buy­ing prod­ucts that are man­u­fac­tured, processed and pack­aged lo­cal­ly.