High Prices In Suva
p. 17 · Read in the full issue
Markets
Tenpence Each for Small Taro
From Our Own Correspondent
Suva, Oct. 16
IMPORTED foodstuffs are getting steadily dearer, and the prices of locally-grown produce at the Suva markets are reaching fantastic levels.
With price control “off” since July 1, the degree of exploitation of people of all races, and particularly of the lower-paid Fijian and Indian workers is almost incredible.
When truckloads of staple foodstuffs arrive at the Suva market, the vegetables and foodstuffs disappear into the possession of a frenzied mob of sharp-eyed people who in a matter of seconds remake the bundles of dalo and other produce into a series of smaller bundles before the masses of waiting consumers are permitted a look-in.
These operators Chinese storekeepers and Indian merchants of various kinds, plus a number of Fijians who have been learning Asiatic methods rather too well— comprise the “middlemen,” a class cordially detested by all who have to take what they can get and pay whatever is demanded.
At the Suva market to-day bundles of three pitifully small dalo were selling at 2/6. Baskets of tapioca (1/- under price control) cost from 3/- to 5/-. And so it went on, and goes on, with Fijians, Indians and others (including Europeans) muttering angrily and building up what must soon become a furious demand for the reimposition of price control and a properly-organised food supply with, if necessary, a Government-quaranteed price to growers.
Occasional gluts still occur. On October 14, for instance, there was a sudden flood of cabbages. Three good, solid cabbages could be bought at 9d. for the lot —not only that, at that price they were being eagerly thrust at potential buyers. In such cases it is a certainty that the growers suffer—not the middlemen.
On July 1 the Government promised to reimpose price control if retailers tried exploitation. The Government has already turned down one appeal to restore control; the present puzzle is to find out just at what point the Government will decide where exploitation has begun.