Importers blame retailers for rising consumer prices

JEDDAH: The Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI) has blamed retailers for the present rising trend of consumer prices in the domestic markets.
“One of the major reasons for high prices is the rate of profit margin distributing outlets decide while pricing consumer goods.
Importers have nothing to do with it,” Chairperson of the traders committee at the JCCI Nashwa Taher said.
While importers sell a commodity at the same price to all retailers, different supermarkets demand different prices from consumers, Taher added.
She said consumers had been misled to believe that importers were behind the price hikes. “Import traders are viewed as greedy thieves and fraudsters because of common men’s lack of knowledge about the pricing process,” she added.
She said the situation has prompted the traders to launch a campaign to clean their image under the aegis of the JCCI.
The campaign will focus on factors beyond the control of traders that have led to high market prices in recent times, Al-Eqtisadiah business daily reported on Tuesday.
However, she did not rule out the possibility of a few importers resorting to unethical practices to raise prices and warned against generalizing such unscrupulous conducts.
She added that import traders want to launch the campaign in collaboration with various modes of media outlets to explain their stand, especially as most consumers are not aware of the constraints they are under.
She also attributed the present rising trend of goods to the inflation related to the rise in the living standard of the people. She believed that inflationary trends caused by domestic factors could be checked by corrective measures.
“But, on the other hand, nobody can do anything about external causes including floods and droughts at exporting countries and changing commercial agreements between countries apart from adverse political developments in some countries affecting import prices.”
She pointed out that the import of high quality food commodities had also been rising. “For instance, import of olive oil, ground olives and canned tuna have increased lately,” she said.
She attributed the increase in food prices in winter to severe weather conditions in several parts of the world that stop or reduce manufacturing various food products.
In a related development, Director-General of the Jeddah Islamic Port Saher Tahlawi said import of food materials increased at the rate of 26 percent during the year compared to the same period last year.
He put the volume of frozen items imported through the port at 1.2 million tons during the period between Jan 1 and Aug 31 this year.