News Desk :
The Directorate of National Consumer Rights Protection has said the mushrooming supershops in the capital are unfairly making excessive profits.
Officials from the DNCRP surveyed supershop outlets of Meena Bazar, Agora, Prince Bazar, Unimart, among others, across Dhaka City over the past weeks and identified irregularities like higher profits and unfair announcements, infringing on consumer rights, reports bdnews24.com
Recently consumers spent almost Tk 5 billion due to traders illegally hiking egg price. The retail prices stamped on supershop products result in a much higher profit and they admitted it, said DNCRP Director General AHM Shafiquzzaman on Tuesday,
He added that the directorate is yet to take a decision as those responsible for the issue are yet to be determined.
“Suppliers point at supershop owners. Now [the owners] are saying suppliers write down the prices. I knew that [owners] will say such things. But it must be made clear as rights of the consumers are involved in this and they are ending up spending more money.”
Tuesday’s programme highlighted supershops making 18-22 percent more profit on eggs, 13-29 percent on rice, up to 28 percent on salt and also on sugar and hilsha fish, among other goods, at different levels.
Shafiquzzaman said these stores are selling Tk 82 per kg rice calling it “premium rice”, but those are sold at Tk 54-58 in the market.
“We have information that the Miniket rice they sell is prepared by trimming coarse ones. Consumers are being deceived there at every step. We have to work on these things.”
He said a tripartite meeting among producers, vendors and suppliers will be held next week.
Kazi Abdul Hannan, editor of Bhoktakantha, spoke about the government-specified mandates about trading food products. “There is no mention of vendors there. They are not licenced by the Department of Agricultural Extension or the commerce ministry.
“Those who are fixing the price are the mediators and the vendors do it for such chain stores. But who are they?”
Hannan added these stores are making “25-29 percent more profit to deliver the goods from vendors to consumers at the outlets”, and questioned whether the profit made from bringing products from producers to customers was “logical”.
“Is the state benefiting from this? This is a huge irregularity.”
Hannan also stressed that the rice farmers have “no link” to rice trade and the market is controlled by millers.
“Some of [the millers] hand rice over to packaging companies. We looked into 17 [rice trading] organisations and eight of them have ties to mills. The others buy rice from mills, package it themselves and sell it under their branding.”
“They have mills for the sake of having them as they don’t make up even 10 percent of the rice they market,” he said, pointing out that such companies book rice in advance and create a deficiency in the wholesale market.
Hannan went on to say that such shortage of supply in the market forces the government to cut duty, which in turn allows the booked rice to enter the market paying tariffs of the contemporary retail price.
“We call this extortionate profits. The chain shops have a role in this. A supershop outlet should buy from the wholesale market, but they are talking about vendors. Consumer rights must be protected here.”
Representatives of Daily Shopping, Prince Bazar, Shwapno, Agora and Unimart were present in the programme.
They said: “We sell premium goods, so the prices are premium as well. We ensure better quality and better service. Our operating cost is higher than [others in the market]. We also provide discounts on some products every month for promotion.”
