The Independent Consumer and Competition Commission (ICCC) Commissioner and CEO, Paulus Ain has urged the people to understand that ICCC does not control the prices of all the goods and services in the country.
"Many people think that ICCC controls prices of all food items and services including shoes, clothes, and others; this kind of perception needs to be corrected," Ain said.
Ain, who was in an interview with National Broadcasting Corporation's Western Highlands (NBC WH) Radio station on May 6, said many people think that ICCC controls the prices of everything however, under the ICCC Act 2002, its main function is to promote competition.
"The price control function was done away 20 years ago, and ICCC was given the price monitoring powers to monitor shelf prices and check factors affecting price increase."
"Its main functions are to promote competition, regulate prices of certain declared goods and services."
Commenting on the current price surveillance exercise it is conducting, Mr. Ain reiterated that the ICCC had sought government intervention to get extra powers to at least control prices of basic food items like rice, flour, sugar, etc.
This enables ICCC to monitor shelf prices of the basic items to be set within a 10 percent range and not above that.
"In the event where the shop owner wants to increase their prices, they have to seek prior approval from ICCC and only upon assessment of their genuineness then we allow them to increase their prices," Ain said.
This exercise now is to check the current shelf price against the base price from last year to ensure prices are within the 10% range.
The basic food items ICCC is monitoring its shelf prices for are rice, tinned fish, tinned meat, flour, sugar, cooking oil, frozen chicken products, frozen meat products, soap (botu bar and liquid) and baby formula.