Retailers confederation slams rises

03 Nov, 2017 - 00:11 0 Views

eBusiness Weekly

Confederation of Zimbabwe Retailers president Denford Mutashu was highly critical of price increases put in place by greed, speculation and profiteering. “Our position remains the same. We are totally against any form of price increases which is necessitated out of greed, speculation and profiteering.
“We have also done our own assessment and discovered that even non-basic commodities’ prices have gone up.
The unfortunate bit is that some of the products may not have received much attention because they are not very basic but prices have gone up on many products.
“We are however in the process of continually engaging suppliers.
“Delta released a statement to the effect that they were not prepared to increase prices and we wonder whether the company is operating in a different environment from the rest of the other suppliers.
“It’s also unfortunate that retailers have been receiving price increases almost on daily basis from their suppliers and most of the retailers have maintained their normal mark-ups and simply pass on the price increases to the consumer.
“Most suppliers are increasing prices on daily basis. We have got the names but unfortunately we want to make sure that we deal with the matters in a manner that will not compromise the situation further.
“We have also provided that information to the Office of the President and Cabinet. It is part of the Inter Ministerial Committee which was set up by President Mugabe to come up with a price stabilization mechanism.
“It is actually becoming very difficult for a retailer to change prices every day because you have to adjust the prices in the system; the till operators have to adjust to the new prices and you also lose confidence with your customers.
“But you also have sections of the retail sector who are taking advantage of the supplier’s price increases and actually passing on to consumers by a wider margin.
“For instance, if a supplier increases by 15 percent or 20 percent; you will have a retailer increasing by 50 percent or 80 percent.
“We have noted that, for instance, stationery retailers have increased prices by 100 percent.
“We have also carried out an assessment across the country and we found out that there are huge differences in prices for the same product in different provinces.”

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