Minister of Tourism, Industry and Commerce, Manniram Prashad has said that while he is pleased with the decrease in flour prices, reports from the ministry’s monitoring of international prices show that the price should be reduced further.
Meanwhile, the Consumer Affairs Division is continuing to monitor food prices on the international and local market to ensure that consumers are protected and receive the best prices for commodities, the Government Information Agency (GINA) reported.
The minister noted that monitoring of commodity prices is an essential aspect of ensuring that consumers are not ripped off since it allows the ministry to know when prices rise and fall internationally and consequently to work with companies to regulate their prices accordingly.
Ministry staff are also tasked with advising the consuming public about the prices that they should pay for some commodities as well. This is done by putting consumer tips and guidelines in the media.
This system, GINA said, has proven very successful for the ministry and beneficial to the consumers since it has helped in regulating the prices of some major commodities such as flour, gasoline, cooking gas and chicken.
During 2008 there was a spike in prices of these commodities and government through the ministry worked with the relevant associations and companies to ensure prices were affordable, GINA added.
Government took additional measures which included subsidizing the cost of flour to over 98 percent of bakeries in the country for over four months at a cost of about $100M. And to combat rising oil prices, government also zero-rated diesel and significantly reduced the tariff on gasoline to allow for transportation cost to remain affordable.
According to Prashad, while there is a global recession and some food prices are rising Guyana is in a unique position to take advantage of this situation since it is the only net exporter of food in the Caribbean.
To this end, he said that more people should support the “Grow More” campaign by the Ministry of Agriculture which has already produced results as many of the locally produced commodity prices are low.
