COMPLIANCE AND REGULATORY ENFORCEMENT

OVER 85 businesses in the TCI will be monitored by the Department of Trade, Industry, and Fair Competition for evidence of price gouging next month. This comes as the Department of Trade gears up to launch its Compliance and Regulatory Enforcement (C.A.R.E) drive in February 2023. The overall objective of the C.A.R.E. campaign is to actively educate providers whilst enforcing the main provisions to protect consumers under the Consumer Protection Ordinance, the Department said in a recent statement on Friday, January 27. The Department of Trade, which is responsible for the promotion and enforcement of the TCI Consumer Protection Ordinance, said it anticipates that the drive will lead to a more predictable and efficient trading environment for both consumers and providers alike. What are your thoughts?

Long overdue

There is a hardware supplier who every time the hurricane was coming would double the price for the much-needed wood to board up the houses on island.

Everyone knows. It is long overdue.

Free market necessary

TCIG’s blundering is suddenly rising. This government has been an excellent improvement, so far! There is an irony as well. You ask this question in the same week that the NYT has two articles about the risk and damage of economic regulation. Older decision-makers will remember the huge debate about regulation in the 70s and 80s. It is hard to regulate without degrading productivity and wealth. Free markets work very well. Health and road safety are examples of sectors in which people ill understand the risk of death and injury. Grocery shopping is an example of a sector in which suppliers and customers are much better informed than regulators and are always more up-to-date.

I guess these regulators will go home and ask their partners about the grocery market. Getting data of the quality required is impossible. That is the case for all markets. But wait! TCIG has already destroyed our labour and capital markets. Why not finish off consumer markets now? After all the privileged elite will hardly notice until the underclass boils over. Then they can leave for Florida.

A shot in the dark

It would be useful and imperative if the newly created Department of Trade would see as part of its mandate, the ability to deal with competition in the Turks and Caicos Islands. It is that concept of competition that is hurting native-born Turks and Caicos Islanders. There was a time in the history of the TCI when natives were dominant and the only players in certain business activities. Retail and wholesale trade, with very few exceptions, throughout the islands were under TCIslander's control.

The idea of price gouging is not so much a major issue. Governments come and they go, reduce tariffs on certain items, e.g., building materials during a hurricane and the local stores still increase prices, governments virtually standby and do “nothing”. There is no political pushback for such negligence and callous neglect of the people on the part of the TCI government and the politicians.

TCIslanders value their governments, ministers, MPs and political parties, it seems, more than they value themselves and their own welfare. There is a need, however, for some wider protections in various industries to be afforded to Turks and Caicos Islanders. Fair Competition rules need to be introduced to protect the native-born in areas such as electrical, plumbing, mechanical etc, the (MEP), trades where millions of dollars change hands.

Business licensing rules now need to eliminate any license in these areas granted to the newly created term by the expat community, the (non-native). What is needed if the Minister responsible for consumer protection, wants to do something tangible, is for him to publish a code of conduct so that the consumer and the merchant may have guidelines to follow. There is no published consumer price index known to the TCI and reliance is made on the overly inflationary US Consumer Price Index, which bears little or no comparison to the TCI. What are they working with? Do they know what they are working with? Is this a shot in the DARK?

Reduce tariffs and taxes first

The TCI consumer, like most in the Caribbean region and the underdeveloped world, is the most disrespected and neglected demographic ever. Food chains target the low-income areas to dump shoddy goods, inclusive of goods nearing the expiry date and past due date and of course prices have skyrocketed. Against what baseline of pricing the CARE Unit would be operating on?

In terms of alleged price gouging, what are they dealing with?

To date there is no indication that the Government has reduced tariffs, taxes or anything else unlike the previous PDM Government- 2016-2021. So what is the point of this exercise? It is not however too late.

This Government, having projected $400m in revenues, a revised and upward estimate based on world demand for TCI tourism, no real marketing effort on the

Government’s part, can reduce taxes in most areas. Here is a start, reduce customs duties on all breadbasket items, remove them altogether, remove stamp duty on land purchases by native TCIs, reduce the telecommunications tax, etc. This government is expecting an unexpected windfall because the COVID bonus continues, and visitors are flocking to the English-speaking region in droves. Resorts are full, monies are coming in and they have enough fiscal space, again not owing to any planning or budgeting on their part, to seriously cut taxes in favour of the TCI consumer. “No-One” is telling them not to police price gouging but this seems like a political ruse to pretend to the public like they are ‘doing something’. Yet ‘nothing’ tangible such as cutting taxes, imports, and customs on breadbasket items, ever went into effect. So how and where they will deal with price gouging?

Consumers need help

A quick read of the Attorney General’s Chambers’ website on the Consumer Protection Ordinance, would show that the minister responsible for consumer protection, presumably the Minister of Finance, carries some powers to do something here. Under s. 16(1) (d.), of that law, the minister or minister in cabinet, carries the actual and overarching power to “regulate the prices at which goods,