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Living costs and consumer apathy

The Government's plans to speedily reduce the cost of living seem to have hit a snag with the country's retail trade, in particular, proving recalcitrant on the question of lowering the prices of consumables, despite a new indirect tax regime coming into force. It was expected that the replacement of GST by VAT would help depress prices somewhat, but this has not come to pass in the case of a considerable number of consumer items. As a result, the high cost of living continues to remain a contentious issue.

It is the experience of most consumers that the prices of essential consumables, such as bread, have hardly changed from their pre-VAT levels. This is intriguing because VAT was not reportedly imposed on a series of essential commodities which impact most on the cost of living and the quality of life of the ordinary people. Clearly, the laws of economics are being trammelled by some retail traders whose social conscience has been smothered by the profit motive. This is to be regretted because it is the ordinary citizen who suffers most from these anti-social attitudes.

A couple of days back, the authorities at the Department of Internal Trade outlined some of the obstacles which are getting in the way of ensuring reduced prices of essentials. For one thing, there are loopholes in the existing laws on these matters, which, we are told by Commerce Minister Ravi Karunanayake, would be sought to be put right by the proposed Consumer Affairs and Fair Trading Act.

Next in the line of constraints is the practical inability of the authorities to enforce price reductions consistently and uniformly on account of a dearth of resources, both human and material. The Director General of Internal Trade was quoted saying, for instance, that his Department possessed only 147 officials to cover a vast network of some 150,000 retail outlets. This makes monitoring of price levels difficult. Nor would it prove easy to effectively crackdown on errant traders. Besides, the mobility of these officers has been seriously hampered by a lack of sufficient vehicles.

The allegation that the Government is sitting idly by while the retail trade is proving uncooperative cannot be made, because it was known for a fact that the relevant State agencies were, indeed, monitoring consumer prices and taking to task some traders who were not effecting price changes. However, the enormity of the task has defied attempts at handling it.

Obviously, close physical monitoring of prices has to be carried out by the authorities on a vast scale and those traders proving to be exploitative and insensitive to the price reductions, need to be brought speedily to book. For these purposes, the Department of Internal Trade should be endowed with the required amount of human and material resources.

These tasks could be made easy if the public cooperates with the authorities. The consuming public should not only be alert to irregularities of the trading community but be prompt in the task of informing the authorities of these devious practices. Then, perhaps, the relevant State agencies would be in a position to come down hard on the culprits.

The practicability of these plans would depend on the degree to which the consumer is aware of his rights and the obligations of the trading community. Unfortunately a consumer awareness is the very thing which is lacking among the local public. There is a marked tendency among local consumers to remain indifferent to unfair trading practices.

Local consumers need to be shaken out of this apathy. Serious consideration should be given by the authorities to the task of educating the public on consumer issues and on alerting them to their rights and responsibilities.

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