Chester Sam­bra­no

The Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SATT) says price in­creas­es may be on the hori­zon de­pend­ing on what the bud­get brings.

The 2020/2021 fis­cal pack­age will be de­liv­ered by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert on Oc­to­ber 5.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia this morn­ing Ra­jiv Diptee, SATT pres­i­dent said cus­tomers would have to pay more, “De­pend­ing on if new tax­es are in­tro­duced, any shifts in Forex avail­abil­i­ty or pos­si­ble ero­sion in the ex­change rates.”

Diptee ex­plained that these types of changes cre­ate shocks to prices as they cre­ate an in­crease in the cost of op­er­a­tion as well as have an im­pact on the cost of goods.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew ear­li­er, Diptee said su­per­mar­kets are not to be blamed for most of the prices that have al­ready been raised.

He said these in­creas­es come from sup­pli­ers.

“There is a say­ing in our in­dus­try su­per­mar­kets are price tak­ers, not price set­ters. We do not set prices when we buy prod­ucts from our sup­pli­ers - we set mar­gins on the prod­ucts.”

He said the re­al­i­ty is that the prices they pur­chase at have been in­creas­ing, more so due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“This is a sit­u­a­tion we’ve nev­er been in be­fore, the scarci­ty of re­sources can­not be un­der­stat­ed.”

How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted that some sup­pli­ers have been us­ing the pan­dem­ic to in­crease prices and this should not be tol­er­at­ed.

“The pan­dem­ic is a scape­goat for cer­tain types of be­hav­iour that should not be tak­ing place right now. Cer­tain sup­pli­ers may be tak­ing ad­van­tage of the sit­u­a­tion.”

Diptee said this mat­ter was brought to the at­ten­tion of Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon since the be­gin­ning of the pan­dem­ic as the SATT is not a “reg­u­la­to­ry watch­dog.”

He sug­gest­ed that con­sumers should take ad­van­tage of the choic­es they have and not be­come vic­tims of price-goug­ing by cer­tain su­per­mar­ket re­tail­ers.

When su­per­mar­kets raised prices in Jan­u­ary, Min­is­ter Gopee-Scoon is­sued a me­dia re­lease urg­ing for com­pas­sion.

She said, “The MTI (Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try) would like to take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to ap­peal to man­u­fac­tur­ers, im­porters, dis­trib­u­tors and su­per­mar­ket own­ers to con­sid­er the con­sumer in the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cli­mate and work with the Gov­ern­ment to en­sure sta­ble and fair pric­ing and to re­frain from price goug­ing and oth­er ex­ploita­tive prac­tices.”

The Min­is­ter added that the Con­sumer Af­fairs Di­vi­sion (CAD), the con­sumer pro­tec­tion and ad­vo­ca­cy arm of the MTI is com­mit­ted to and will con­tin­ue its price mon­i­tor­ing ex­er­cis­es and pub­lish­ing of su­per­mar­ket prices to fa­cil­i­tate com­par­a­tive shop­ping.