T&T: Competition, not price control, will keep prices down

Instead of being so busy activisting, Hazel Brown would be better off taking an elementary course in economics. What Trinidad & Tobago needs is not price control but competition. Furthermore, if the T&T dollar closer to the U.S. dollar in terms of valuation, that, too, would have a salutary effect on price reduction. Finally, if Trinbagonians did not take a perverse pride in paying an arm and a leg for a good or service, they would prefer goods at the lowest possible prices and actually agitate for competition rather than price control. Having the latter only ensures that the consumer gets screwed with a shabby product because the businessman needs to make a profit; furthermore, price controls just ensure that the economy is government-run rather than market driven. Either T&T is capitalist or it is not; it cannot be both. It's high time that T&T folk opted for less government rather than more.

CONSUMER activist Hazel Brown yesterday stressed that it was only on the basis of information that people could make demands for the reduction of prices.

She contended that one of the main problems in Trinidad and Tobago was that there was no authority to control prices, since the disbanding of the prices commission several years ago.