UHM finds price hikes have global origin

A price monitoring exercise carried out by the Union Haddiema Maghqudin between June and August has shown increases on day-to-day items ranging from five to 20 per cent.

However, most of the increases were due to global price rises, UHM secretary Gejtu Vella said.

The survey was carried out for the UHM by Karl Montfort and Nicholas Borg Cardona. Shoppers bought 200 items from dozens of outlets in four areas in Malta and Gozo to ensure the survey obtains a true picture of price movements.

The exercise will continue to be held until next May to see whether there will be any price fluctuations due to the introduction of the euro.

Mr Montfort said a basket was created after carrying out a survey with 40 people representative of Maltese society to see what they purchase on a daily basis. A total of 200 items were identified, most of which consisted of food. But the shopping basket also included goods and services, household maintenance products, medical products and alcohol.

The "whistle shoppers" bought the items from 140 different outlets, ranging from supermarkets to pharmacies and from butchers to stationeries. They kept receipts so that prices could be compared.

Mr Montfort said there were notable price increases on various food items, especially those affected by international increases in the price of grain.

There were also two cases of "somewhat high increases in catering establishments". These will be looked into.

Mr Vella said the UHM was not there to monitor inflation as there existed a better mechanism to do that. What the union wanted to ensure was that there were no price hikes because of the changeover to the euro. He said the union was prepared to name and shame if abuses were found.

The union was concerned about inflation because this affected both the people's purchasing power and also competitiveness and, ultimately, people's jobs. But the best guarantee against inflation was competition not price control, he said.

The exercise falls under a protocol signed last June between the UHM and the Chamber for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises - GRTU.

Complaints about price increases will be forwarded to the GRTU and the Euro Observatory, a section within the Finance Ministry verifying that the dual display of euro and liri is working as it is meant to. The operator involved will then be urged to revise the prices if there is no reason for the increase.