The Tribune

APPARENTLY, Bahamian consumers are on the wrong end of a markup system not designed to benefit them. Who could have guessed?

Perhaps it may have dawned on more than a few of us as we look at the prices while we go shopping and compare them to the prices we might see elsewhere. Perhaps it might have occurred to us when we packed our bags with purchases during visits to Florida on shopping runs rather than paying out in our local store. After all, if you can save money while adding the cost of a flight and a hotel to your shopping, something isn’t adding up somewhere. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to solve this mystery.

So while we welcome the comments of former Price Control Commission chairman Danny Sumner, we would have appreciated a bit more determination to tackle the problem – or be more forthright in his comments on it – when he was still in that post.

Take a walk along the aisle of many stores and the problem is right in front of our eyes, literally.

We have seen ourselves products such as an English pie marked with £1.99 (about $2.69) on the tin, and yet a $10 price tag above it. Bear in mind the price marked on the tin takes into account the supposed markup, and import and duty don’t account for all that difference.

What we should point out, however, is that this is nothing new. High markups on some products were happening in Mr Sumner’s time, they are happening now.

There is a collection of different issues affecting prices. Inflation is part of it. The global supply chain issues are another large part of it with shipping companies prioritising high value shipments over others. An increase in oil prices is another. What excessive markup does is exacerbate these issues.

You know what you pay at the grocery store normally – and you can feel the pinch when spending $100 doesn’t get you what it got you three months ago, even taking into account the return of VAT on breadbasket items.

There are some areas where we can be aware as customers, and be ready to take our business elsewhere if someone overcharges – but there are others such as grocery stores where we need the Price Control Commission to be vigilant. Can we work together and hold a meeting to come to a solution to minimise the pricing, as Mr Sumner suggests? Perhaps, perhaps not – but it would certainly be worth trying.

Minimum wage

A recommendation on a minimum wage increase could be submitted within a month, it is reported – and it brings a tough choice for Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis.

On the campaign trail, he was promising an increase to $250 a week, but with money tight in both the private and public sector, it will be interesting to see if he sticks with that.

Then again, with prices on the rise, anything less might barely shift the bar on living standards from what it has been.

As ever, there will be the question of what the government wants to do, and what the government can afford to do. Fall short of that election promise, and Mr Davis might have some unhappy supporters to answer. Spend money we don’t have, and we might see job losses or an increase in the deficit.

Still, a pandemic would not have been the circumstances any of us would have wanted while these decisions were being made.

It’s easy to promise on the campaign trail, now Mr Davis has to show what he can deliver.