The Directorate of National Consumer Rights Protection (DNCRP) has formed an investigation team to unearth the reasons behind the price hikes of personal care toiletry products including soap, aromatic soap, detergent powder, toothpaste, shampoo, and other cleaners. The members of the investigation team would visit the factories of the related companies and review the price of raw materials and other related expenditures.
If any abnormal thing is found behind the price hike, the directorate would take legal action against the companies. Prices of toiletries and other homecare products shot up in the local market in the last four weeks, which is hurting consumers, as demand and necessity for such hygiene-related items increased notably during the pandemic. Soap, detergent, toilet cleaner, toothpaste, tissue/napkin paper, and a few other home-care products saw a 10-30 per cent price hike during this period, while the income of most of the consumers declined in real terms. Manufacturing companies said the rising import cost of raw materials and comparatively low sales in the current year forced them to review the prices of the items.
When some products of a brand become popular among people, companies increase their prices seeing an opportunity. It increases people’s suffering. Consumer rights groups urged the government to regularly monitoring of the fast-growing consumer products market to keep the prices of such goods within the reach of limited-income people. However, the manufacturers said if the price of raw materials and the price of the US dollar become stable, the prices of various toiletry products such as soap, detergent, toothpaste and so, will take another 4-5 months to come down.
We do ask the CAB to increase monitoring thus profit mongering companies cannot cut the consumers’ pockets deeply. The manufacturers should also refrain from making extra profit, thus increasing the number of people who will have a habit of using the toiletry items.
