JS committee takes issue with prices

We appreciate the activism of the parliamentary standing committee on commerce ministry in coming out of the confines of parliament and taking up the burning issue of price jacking in Ramadan market. While expressing displeasure, it has asked the commerce ministry to step up market monitoring to keep prices at a 'tolerable level'.
The parliamentary standing committee as an oversight body should go beyond exhortations. It will take much more than expression of concern and exhortations to keep market manipulators in check where profiteering in countless sums of money is involved. When money sloshes in and out of the distorted market mechanisms riddled with cartel and monopoly, nothing short of government cracking down with adequate political will on the string pullers of the markets can yield any positive result.
The instruments of anti-hoarding, consumer protection and competition laws are available but these are conspicuous by their non-implementation. An increasing number of mobile teams are being fielded to monitor prices. But the seasonality of raids on kitchen market as during Ramadan with the annual cycle virtually left to its own extortionist devices has made it in to business as usual. Actually, it has bred a sense of impunity rather than enforced a sense of social commitment or business ethics among the trading community who also have proximity to political power.
Imagine the present situation, the commerce ministry keeps telling us that supplies are abundant. There is every reason to believe that supply side is strong given the productivity and procurement figures. Why then the unabated price hike?
Although demand in Ramadan increases, observers believe that due to falling purchasing power of the consumers this year's demand is rather dampened. Given a steady availability picture there should be no earthly reason for prices to be hiked like these have been. Take the case of edible oil; its international price has decreased but the local price has not. Surely, the government has a lot of work to do to strike at the roots and bring about a healthy connection between wholesalers and retailers. The immediate priority though is containing extortions at different levels that give a handle for price markups.