The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas needs to “modernise” its entire retail pricing system, a senior Chamber of Commerce executive said yesterday, arguing that this nation should fall into line with major jurisdictions by using ‘shelf pricing’ as opposed to ‘item pricing’.

Winston Rolle, the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation’s (BCCEC) chief executive, said laws and regulations requiring retailers to put ‘price labels’ on every shelf item defeated the purpose of installing product scanning systems at the cash register.

Retailers throughout the US and developed world scan all products, and their prices, into a computer system prior to their sale.

The product’s price is only displayed to consumers on the shelves, but Mr Rolle said the Bahamas’ insistence on ‘label pricing’ meant retailers were still required to use “labour intensive” manual pricing - denying them the cost savings that scanning systems are intended to produce.

Meanwhile, the BCCEC chief executive agreed with AML Foods chairman, Dionisio D’Aguilar, that it was “not feasible” for Price Control inspectors to demand that every brand in certain product categories - especially the high-end ones - be price controlled.

However, he stopped short of calling for the abolition of Price Control regulations, saying they still had “a role to play” in ensuring breadbasket items remained affordable for low income Bahamians.

But Mr Rolle also agreed that Price Control should adopt some of the features of an ‘Office of Fair Trading’, ensuring companies in certain sectors did not operate as ‘price fixing cartels’ and engage in other anti-consumer behaviour.

Noting the pricing issues facing many Bahamian retailers, Mr Rolle told Tribune Business: “We still have laws on the books that require all items on the shelf to be priced individually.

“Believe it or not, it’s still a challenge people are having. It’s why stores have never adopted scanners where they put the price of items into the system, and prices come up when the products go through the sales registry.”

He added: “In the US and Europe they’ve long moved away from that. Consumers take the price on the shelves, and the system confirms the price at the Point of Sale.

“We still have a lot of modernisation of the system to do to make it more business friendly, and more user friendly as well.

“It’s very counter-intuitive,” the BCCEC chief executive told Tribune Business.

“A lot of persons who may have wanted to implement it [scanning systems], because it gives the user a degree of control from an operating cost standpoint, get no cost savings as they have to label every item on the shelf. We need to modernise it.”

Bahamian consumers would still be able to view product prices on the shelves, and Mr Rolle added: “It does not make sense for the supplier, provider to have every item individually priced.”

Responding to Mr D’Aguilar’s complaints about the “dogmatic’ approach Price Control was taking towards AML Foods’ Solomon’s Fresh Market stores, requiring that even high-end, organic products - as well as generic brands - be price controlled, Mr Rolle agreed that appeared to be over-zealous.

“The whole purpose behind Price Control is to ensure breadbasket items are maintained at respectable pricing levels, so that all persons from all walks of like will be able to afford them,” the BCCEC chief executive said.

“But to put price control on top-end items........ there’s certain products where you need to let market forces control the pricing. For Price Control to be in a situation where it’s dictating pricing on every single item, that’s just mot feasible.”

Still, Mr Rolle was adamant that Price Control “still has a role to play” in ensuring that essential staples of daily life remained affordable to low income Bahamians, who “can least afford for prices to be hiked on them”.

He agreed, though, that preventing ‘price fixing’ by companies operating as cartels “should be part of their focus”.