It was revealed at this week’s press briefing at the Office of the Prime Minister that mom and pop businesses are the greatest violators of price control regulations.
Addressing members of the media on the subject was Senior Price Control Inspector, Theodore Curry who said, “their complaint is its difficult doing business in the country. So anywhere where they can try and get around the system they try to do that. But we try to admonish and try to tell them that the law is the law, you have to find other creative and innovative means to make extra money. If its on the items that we control, you may have to unfortunately pass that cost onto something else to make up the difference. We don’t like to do that but the reality that’s what it is.”
For his part, Director of the Price Control Commission Rex Adderley spoke on expanding the staff complement to cover the entire country. He said, “we are seeking now to look at a full picture of the whole Bahamas and look at islands that require inspectors and those that don’t have inspectors we want to hire inspectors in those areas. I think its four more islands that need inspectors and we want to boost up some of the major islands with an additional one. Major islands I mean the big islands like Eleuthera and Abaco and Andros. We want to boost them up with an additional inspector. Now the budget requirement for them, we have submitted those budget requirements – four of them – with vehicles on the budget requirement also. Because you know they have to travel up and down throughout those islands to go to different stores.”
