Police enforce price controls

On last night’s newscast we looked at how Belizean merchants are dealing with any prospective rise in taxes. Today I made the rounds with Belize City Police officers who are trying to make sure that those sometimes-obscure price control regulations are strictly enforced.

Inspector Dennis Arnold, Price Checker
?Police will be going to business after business, if it have to tek us to the end of the month we will do that.?

Janelle Chanona, Reporting
Armed with authority from the Supplies Control Department, members of the Belize Police Department have making the rounds at grocery stores across the country to check the prices on controlled goods like rice, flour, sugar, beans, cheese and beer.

According to police prosecutor Inspector Dennis Arnold, the exercise was initiated by consumers? objections to higher rates.

Inspector Dennis Arnold
?From the first of this month, we got complaints that some businesses had hiked their prices. So now our job that we are doing now is just to go into the stores and sensitizing and educating the merchants that consumers will not buy goods that the taxes have been hice.?

As police visited grocery stores on Cemetery Road in Belize City this morning, a pattern emerged: no major violations but there is the sticky point of price tags.

Inspector Dennis Arnold
?What?s the price of this??

Grocer
?Five ninety-five.?

Inspector Dennis Arnold
?And this yah??

Grocer
?Twelve seventy five.?

Inspector Dennis Arnold
?You see you gat wah lee hesitation deh try remember the price but if the price deh pan it, then as you look pan it, you wah see the price. Okay? So you need to price everything.?

Corporal Glen Rivero
?Tomorrow we?ll be coming back to check to make sure and ensure all items are priced.?

Inspector Dennis Arnold
?If you no have price, then we take you to jail.?

Corporal Glen Rivero
?You can be summoned and will be taken to court and will be dealt with in accordance with the act that covers Supplies and Control.?

Inspector Dennis Arnold
?Ninety-nine point nine percent of the businesses that we have visited, the law is saying that all items in the store must be priced and these in stores they just have the goods on the shelves but the price on the shelf, not on the goods themselves, maybe in bulk right? It?s easier work, it?s shorter but then the law is saying something different. Not that the shelf should be priced, but the goods should be priced.?

Janelle Chanona
?In theory, the stores can charge whatever they want on most of the goods that they sell, but it?s just a particular list that they have to sell at the price the government approves. Correct??

Inspector Dennis Arnold
?Exactly.?

?Ninety-nine percent of the goods are not controlled. Only basic commodity goods that we are checking: rice, beans, flour, lard etc. Those are controlled but other goods, we look at them to see that they are priced, if there are not priced, we warn the merchants that they should put prices on the other goods. We also check expiry dates on goods. If we found any goods that the expiry date has passed then we told them to take it off the shelf if not, they can be summoned or we can turn them over to the Ministry of Health.?

Down the street, shopkeepers complained of getting stiffed by suppliers. This man claims he bought soft drinks during the higher tax period, which he now has to sell at January rates.

Inspector Dennis Arnold
?You have to take them to court. You have to take them to court. The supplier should refund. You take them to court; you know the procedure to take someone to court? Okay, well you have to take them to court to get your refund. I believe it?s an advantage.?

Janelle Chanona
?Which supplier didn?t want to??

Grocer
?Bowen and Bowen.?

Inspector Dennis Arnold
?That?s the problem that most of the businesses are complaining to us. They had buy goods from Bowen and now when we roll back the taxes, they have to roll back the prices so they are the one at a loss, but what the police did, we just advise them to take them to court.?

When we contacted Bowen and Bowen today, representatives informed us that no refunds are being issued to retailers. In the meantime, the police department says it will continue to serve as a consumer watch group as long as necessary.

This evening, Bowen and Bowen’s sales manager Nick Pollard informed News 5 that his company attempted a refund programme but it was cancelled when his employees could not verify the retailers who had actually paid the higher prices for their products and were therefore due a refund. Pollard says they sympathize with those honest shop-owners who were caught in the confusion but with six thousand retailers, it proved very difficult to find which establishments were not simply trying to take advantage of the situation. It is not clear what action government will take regarding those extra tax revenues that Bowen and Bowen collected in the first few days of February.