Supermarket Association head on fuel price increase –'Everything will be affected'

PRESIDENT of the Supermarket Association (SATT) Rajiv Diptee said food suppliers will have to do an assessment to determine the actual impact of the fuel price increase set for April 19, as announced on Friday by the Finance Minister.

He however warned that realistically speaking, the price of transportation fuel, will affect everything.

“Raising the price of fuel directly affects the cost of living. Everything will be affected,” Diptee said when asked for a comment on what was the fourth price adjustment to fuel since the PNM returned to power in 2015.

Diptee said suppliers will have to make an assessment before they implement the necessary adjustments.

“That pertains to marketing, operations, transport and then they will formally notify the stores of the adjustment in pricing that will come. This will differ from supplier to supplier, supermarket to supermarket.”

Diptee described the timing of the increase in fuel prices as ill-advised and a bit insensitive.

“When you consider that the economy has just reopened fully, when you consider school is just about to start back. So we would have a population that hasn’t been able to recover their income, they are already in an impoverished state and they haven’t had that time to really catch themselves."

He said the customer would now have less in their pockets to spend because the percentage they would have had, where disposable income is concerned, will shrink further due to the increase in the price of fuel which is a necessary component for the movement of goods and services.

He said even though the cost of diesel increased by a mere $0.50 there will still be a direct and indirect impact on operational costs.

“This is so because goods have to move from the port to the stores and warehouses. However, the road conditions have not improved so this will be a continuation of inefficiencies.

"Somewhere along the line suppliers of goods,will be affected based on the cost of their transportation which I’m sure an exercise will be conducted by each of these companies to see how this impacts their cost of operation.”