By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business

Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

A Bahamian wholesaler says last week’s meeting with the Prime Minister yielded little in terms of concrete measures to combat surging inflation as the situation is outside The Bahamas’ control.

Gregory Pickering, Island Wholesale’s sales and marketing manager, told Tribune Business the meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office was enlightening but it was determined that there was “very little” that could be done about the increasing cost of consumer goods as The Bahamas imports virtually all it consumes.

“These prices are brought into the country. We wanted to let Prime Minister Davis know that it is not us raising our margins or artificially inflating the prices,” Mr Pickering said.

“The question he asked us was: What can we do as wholesalers to try and mitigate some of the price increases off of the backs of Bahamians, and if there was anything the Government could do to intervene and help wholesalers? We told him that with the rising price of shipping, and freight prices increasing the way they are, it is what it is.

“Most price increases are coming from the suppliers and the people that manufacture because raw materials have gone up for them, and another thing along with the price increases is supply and demand because a lot of products are now in short supply. When there are product shortages prices increase”

All wholesalers are doing at this point is passing on prices charged by their suppliers. “Our margins have not gone up,” Mr Pickering added. “This is just one of the things we have to ride out as a country because there is very little wholesalers can do about the price increases at this point.

“Just for an example, our freight for one container, we used to pay $5,000, but now we are paying $11,000 for the same container. That is more than double the price in the space of a year. Unfortunately we cannot eat those prices or else we would go out of business.”

Mr Pickering suggested the situation might be eased if the Government would “slash 40 percent off of Customs duties”, but the Public Treasury needs every cent of revenue it can get and can ill-afford to cut taxes.

“Nothing came out of that meeting because there is nothing that can be done from our perspective. We just have to wait until this subsides,” he added.