Finance Minister Professor Biman Prasad

The government is extremely concerned with the exorbitant increase in chicken prices charged by a few unscrupulous traders in the last few days.

Finance Minister Professor Biman Prasad says it is clear that some of these traders have tried to take unfair advantage of vulnerable consumers and, to some extent, sensationalised the VAT increase for reasons better known to them.

He says the government had formed a price surveillance taskforce comprising of Fijian Competition and Consumer Commission, Fiji Revenue and Custom Services, and the Ministry of Finance to monitor prices after the budget announcement.

He says they have clearly noted a disproportionately large increase of over 30 percent in chicken prices in the last two days charged by a few unscrupulous traders.

He says that while chicken prices should have only increased by six percent given the increase in VAT from 9 to 15 percent, these businesses in their own commercial interest went ahead to increase prices by over 30 percent.

Prasad says this is unacceptable and has thanked those industry stakeholders who came out quickly to clarify this issue.

He says they expect that the market will immediately rectify this anomaly.

The Finance Minister says he has also been advised by FCCC and has also got assurance from some of the industry players that chicken prices will be brought down immediately.

He has reminded businesses that this kind of unscrupulous behavior seen in the last two days is highly unacceptable.

Prasad says the poultry industry is highly protected by the government with a 32 percent fiscal duty and a 10 percent import excise duty.

He says this is a total tariff protection of 42 percent, and they are only doing this to ensure that Fijians c get affordable and high-quality chicken products from the domestic market.

Prasad says that the chicken wholesale and retail market is unregulated as they believe that there is sufficient competition in the market to avoid carteling and price fixing.

However, they are closely monitoring this situation, and if need be, the government is prepared to take tough measures on those trying to distort the market.

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