The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A well-known businessman yesterday said the law did not support the Price Control Commission’s demands for every food store to hold documents justifying prices for ‘breadbasket’ items.

Rick Lowe, an executive with the Nassau Institute think-tank, told Tribune Business that based on his analysis the Price Control Act provided no legal justification for the complaints voiced by Commission chairman, E. J. Bowe.

Mr Bowe, in comments that particularly targeted Super Value, threatened on Wednesday that the Commission would prosecute any food store that did not possess documents supporting the ‘breadbasket’ item prices they were charging.

He added that the Commission had issued enough warnings on the matter already, and slammed Super Value’s Nassau Street branch for not having the necessary paperwork.

Rupert Roberts, Super Value’s owner and president, declined to comment on the matter when contacted yesterday, saying he wanted to leave it to a “collective response” through the Coalition for Responsible Taxation.

However, he previously told Tribune Business that complying with Mr Bowe’s demands would only increase costs for the consumer.

“It’s very inconvenient and very expensive to send the records from the head office to the store with the goods,” the Super Value chief told this newspaper then.

“That’s very unnecessary and shouldn’t be part of the expense. It increases prices for the consumer if we’re going to have to start doing that. It doesn’t make any sense.”

And Mr Lowe yesterday argued that there was legal requirement that stores possess the documents being demanded by Mr Bowe and his Commission.

While the Price Control Act gives the Commission the authority to initiate investigations and demand relevant documents from merchants, it can only do so by submitting written notice to those it is probing.

Tribune Business’s own assessment of the 1971 Act, which it obtained from the Government’s website, backed Mr Lowe’s analysis. Nowhere does it mention that all food stores have to keep every single piece of paper to justify the prices they are charging for ‘breadbasket’ items.

“I don’t see anything in law that gives him [Mr Bowe] the power to do what he’s doing,” Mr Lowe told Tribune Business. “Unless they can prove otherwise, the law doesn’t allow him to do that.

“It doesn’t bode well for the future unless this sort of stuff is reined in. It creates enemies of everybody instead of being collaborative and trying to get along.”

And Mr Lowe added via a subsequent e-mail: “The article in The Tribune with EJ Bowe declaring he’s had enough from Super Value is just a stepping stone to more demonisation and ridiculous laws.

“Unless this [Act] has been changed they have no right to expect the store to have the invoices for goods sent from the warehouse. Bowe must go to the warehouse or ask for the documents to be presented to their offices, as the law states. We should not let this go unchallenged publicly.”

Echoing Mr Roberts’ earlier comments, Mr Lowe said that in the case of Super Value and other multi-store food retailers, their warehouses were distributing goods to numerous locations.

Requiring them all to meet the Commission’s record-keeping demands, he added, would create a costly, unnecessary increase in bureaucracy that would be eliminated by Price Control simply asking head offices and/or warehouses for the documents.

“Do we expect them to have 10 copies in every single store for every single item on price control? It really is a bit much,” Mr Lowe told Tribune Business.

Acknowledging that Mr Bowe was “a wonderful gentleman”, and that both he and the Commission were performing what they believed were their jobs, Mr Lowe again questioned whether they were being used to target previously outspoken Value-Added Tax (VAT) opponents.

He argued that the Commission, like the recently-announced VAT Appeals Commission, had been empowered to act as “prosecutor, judge and jury”, with businesses forced to ultimately go to the Supreme Court for grievance redress.

“It gives the bureaucrats the power of summary conviction,” Mr Lowe told Tribune Business. “They have the right to come in, remove your inventory you have paid money for. They can then fine you, and you have to go to the Supreme Court.

“You’re denying people their right to the rule of law, and when you have the rule of man you see what you get.”

He added that Mr Bowe’s broad brush comments, and staged inspections accompanied by the media, were “demonising” merchants whether that was the intention or not.

And they were also giving Bahamian consumers the misleading impression that the Commission could prevent price increases when it could not.

“They don’t have the capacity to control prices,” Mr Lowe told Tribune Business. “Prices are controlled by the market and what we pay for abroad.

“Locally produced items are more expensive because of the cost of doing business here. It’s really unfortunate they’ve decided to do this.

“Without a viable business sector, you don’t have a viable government. The only way government gets its money is from the taxpayer and business community.”