by CAROL MARTINDALE JOIN CONSUMER ORGANISATIONS and be more vigilant when shopping for food.

This advice for shoppers has come from Minister of Consumer Affairs Senator Lynette Eastmond who was updating the ministry's exercise on pricing of food across supermarkets.

"What you really want is to have vibrant consumer organisations, which is not something Government can do. It is something the people of Barbados have to do – join consumer organisations and be a bit more vigilant.

"This is what is done within the more developed countries. And Barbados is going in the direction of being a more developed country . . . so people have to get on board in terms of doing those things that consumers and citizens do in those larger countries."

She also felt shoppers should make more informed choices about where they shopped and what they chose to purchase.

Eastmond, in a telephone interview with the SUNDAY SUN, however, recognised this would take some time.

The first exercise that examined the cost of food items across some supermarkets appeared in the newspaper on March 11.

Days prior, Eastmond said officials believed they needed to identify retail outlets that were showing the increases, stressing that it was not about "naming and shaming".

The minister said it was agreed that this exercise would be reviewed and fine-tuned.

"There were some issues raised and, therefore, the Consumer Affairs Department and the Fair Trading Commission were to sit and fine-tune what they had done. We also said we would make that exercise an annual one," she added.

The minister said that through this exercise supermarkets were more conscious that the department was paying more attention to what they were doing.

She said it was difficult sometimes to address price increases when some international events affected what was happening locally.

"Government, in terms of its policy, is trying to strike a balance between a desire for lower prices and a desire to protect the local industries. A mechanism to do that is to impose higher duties on what you import to make the local produce more attractive.

"Some people are of the view that even if you reduce prices upon entry you might not see a difference in the price anyway. But Government does have a policy to try to protect, especially the agricultural sector. This is important for food security," she said.

"We have to make sure there is food in Barbados. The only way to encourage people to engage in this on a daily basis is to make sure that they can have some domestic market."

Eastmond also said that while there was the complaint of high food prices, there were still some individuals who appeared happy buying very expensive fast-foods – even on Sunday.

"There is a lot of eating out now. These are things Barbadians don't want to talk about, but you should really have a budget and you need to determine if you will eat out once a month. You really shouldn't be eating out every day.

"I don't even think that people who work for pretty large salaries can eat out everyday. It is far too expensive" she said.

She added that while the focus was on supermarkets and basic food items, Barbadians were feeling the pinch in other areas too.

"The price of practically everything you can think of, in terms of services as well, is very high – all kinds of services. It is just remarkable.

It seems that some people are just charging what they feel the market can bear because everything is quite expensive," Eastmond said.