ICCC: Businesses must not increase prices amid Covid-19

By CLARISSA MOI
THE Independent Consumer and Competition Commission (ICCC) says businesses should not take advantage of the Covid-19 situation by increasing prices of goods and services.
Commissioner and chief executive officer Paulus Ain said the ICCC understood that business houses needed to recover the cost of doing business, however, they should not be charging consumers over and above the cost incurred.
Ain was responding to queries from The National about consumer complaints that some shops were increasing prices of some goods over the past few weeks and whether the ICCC had received any directives from the National Pandemic Response Controller and Police Commissioner David Manning under the new isolation strategy to address the situation during this period.
“The ICCC has not received any order from the controller (Manning), hence it is unable to do anything at this stage,” he said.
“However, businesses houses should not be price–gouging under the current pandemic situation.
“Under the current situation we all are going through, all Papua New Guineans should move to garden foods to try to avoid as much as possible processed and store goods.” Ain also noted that like any other Government department and agency, the ICCC had scaled down most of its outdoor operations given the increased threat of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We are only attending to critical inspections such as fuel price inspections,” he said.