Specially designed bread, sometimes colloquially called 'duck bread' in Jamaica. The price of bread and other vital food groups has skyrocketed in recent months in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean because of hikes from United States producers of raw material such as flour and grain. - Junior Dowie/Staff Photographer

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC):

A competition specialist is charging that some underhanded practices, including price fixing and bid rigging, are contributing to the rising cost of living across the Caribbean.

With just over a month to go before the setting up of the Caribbean Community Competition Commission, which will be mandated to deal with anti-competitive practices within the CARICOM Single Market, Dr. Taimoon Stewart said these illegal activities are evident at many levels all across the region.

"We have in our societies in our region, trade associations and they routinely fix prices. So the price of bread goes up, the trade association announces the price of bread is going up," she charged during a panel discussion on 'Levelling the Playing Field: Competition in the CSME'.

"The producers of bread put retail prices on the bread and that is fixing the retail price in advance, and this all impacts on the competition prices, and it is absolutely illegal under the competition regime.

"All of these underhanded things happen and they happen in all our economies," she added.

Stewart said that among the other issues which consumers may want investigated by the commission is the high cost of travel on regional airline, LIAT.

Skyrocketing prices

She contended that since it regained its monopoly of intra-regional travel with its takeover of Caribbean Star, prices have skyrocketed and travellers are disgruntled.

"It may be that LIAT's prices are very justified, but consumers can go to the competition commission or have their governments go to the commission to have this investigated and see if there is any aspect of abuse of dominance or if there is some way they can improve efficiency so that customers are better served," she said.

The commission will be inaugurated on January 18 next year in Suriname where it will be headquartered.