APRIL 9 is the 23rd anniversary of the UN Guidelines for Consumer Protection to which Pakistan is a signatory. Yet consumer interests continue to be trampled upon as food prices soar beyond the reach of many families.

Take for instance green chilly, the price of which touched Rs300 per kg in some markets in Islamabad recently, making it more expensive than meat or chicken. Not very long ago, vegetable sellers used to give a handful of this popular spice free with purchases, usually along with some fresh coriander.

Fortunately, most consumers can do without green chilly in their kitchen, and this was perhaps why little fuss was created over its sudden price hike.

But consumers cannot do without commodities like atta, rice, cooking oil, milk, etc., prices of which have also risen through the roof over the past year. According to the UN World Food Programme, prices of lentils in Pakistan rose by 77 per cent, cooking oil 58 per cent, rice 48 per cent, wheat 35 per cent, and petrol 17 per cent, while the wage rate increase was only 18 per cent.

The squeeze of rising prices is felt most by families earning monthly incomes of less than Rs10,000. Domestic workers, for example, who used to work in three or four houses a day to earn enough every month to pay for rent and feed their families now have to cover some six to eight households per day, which obviously affects the quality of their work and their health as well.

For many pensioners without any other source of income, they’re lucky if their pension lasts them for the first ten days of the month.

It is understandable for commodity prices or even transport charges to rise a little occasionally due to the rise in international oil prices, but not when prices suddenly jump by a large margin, like what happened with the price of green chilly recently or of sugar and atta earlier.

Such sharp escalation of prices of a particular commodity cannot be simply the result of a demand/supply situation but a combination of illegal stockpiling, smuggling, artificial manipulation of prices and profiteering, particularly so when efforts have already been adopted to help bring down prices of the commodity, like a ban on its export to neighbouring countries, release of surplus stock of the commodity from reserves and reduction of import tariffs on the commodity.

In this respect, are the two measures targeted at the price hike announced by the new prime minister in his maiden speech at the National Assembly, viz., increase in the support price for wheat and increase in the minimum wage from Rs5,000 to Rs6,000, sufficient to mitigate against further expected escalation of prices, our projected inflation rate being recently revised from 6.5 per cent to eight or nine per cent for this fiscal year?

The price hike may be an international phenomenon - which some experts have attributed to speculation in oil and other commodities - that has affected a whole range of countries from the US to China, South Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Kuwait, Azerbaijan, etc.

There may not be much we can do about external price shocks, but we can be rendered less vulnerable to such shocks if our agricultural sector is not in simultaneous trouble. This means stimulating higher production and bringing more area of land under cultivation of the basic foodstuffs.

Apart from raising the penalty for those who manipulate market prices and ignore the prices advised by the government, another measure which some countries have adopted to counter the illegal syndicates and virtual monopoly held by a handful of purchasers responsible for illegal price manipulations is the encouragement of small business importers/exporters and the setting up of agricultural unions.

Another measure adopted by many countries to counter illegal price manipulation is ensuring strong institutions to monitor the market mechanism and to make amends when necessary. Such countries have trade commissions or consumer rights protection councils to curb the unfair practices of large corporations.

Here in Pakistan, it is the absence of such strong institutions and the legal structure governing the monitoring of price mechanism in the market (anti-trust laws) which is encouraging giant producers/importers to enhance the price level unfairly, jeopardising the welfare of poor consumers.

We have a Monopolies and Restrictive Trade and Practices (Control and Prevention) Ordinance (1971), but it is outdated and needs revision and updating, especially to specifically address price hikes or inflation caused by unfair trade practices.

We also have the Monopoly Control Authority whose objective is to counter undue concentration of economic power, monopoly power and restrictive trade practices, but the organisation is in dire need of a ‘shake-up’ before it can become an effective tool for public interest.

Then we also have the Islamabad Consumer Protection Act (1995) and their subsequent provincial equivalents, which define hoarding and blackmarketing as unfair and provide for the setting up of Consumer Protection Councils consisting of prominent citizens, legislators and government officials. But 13 years have passed since the 1995 Act, yet the CPCs have not been constituted.

Besides, according to a 2002 report by a non-governmental organisation, the problem with our consumer acts is that they are restrictive in their scope, redress measures are lengthy and expensive, and the penalties given are inadequate, thus making them largely ineffective.

Unless we act to ensure that the pursuit of profit by private, small and large, enterprises is compatible with public interest, and unless we recognise the strong linkages between consumer protection and social and economic development, more and more families will be locked in a battle for survival as the price of foodstuffs continue to rise.