Five businesses in the Northern Division have been found to taking advantage of consumers by illegally increasing prices on certain items.

Five businesses in the Northern Division are being investigated for possible price gouging.

The Fijian Competition and Consumer Commission says these businesses are being investigated after a team from the FCCC inspected the retail outlets and found prices had been inflated.

FCCC CEO, Joel Abraham says investigations against the hardware stores and supermarkets in question, started in December.

“A team of analysts are going through the data to ensure that nobody’s engaged in such a practice, now we believe everybody is innocent until proven otherwise as such we’ve accorded all opportunities to these businesses to be able to provide a representation to inform the FCCC how they have complied with the requirements.”

Abraham says these businesses will be fined if the data analysis establishes that there has been a deliberate act to inflate prices on certain items without explanations.