ICCC reviews pricing of sugar industry

 THE Independent Consumer and Competition Commission (ICCC) is undertaking a comprehensive pricing review of the sugar industry to determine whether or not to continue to regulate prices.

Chief executive officer Dr Billy Manoka said: “This is a timely opportunity to assess competition in the sugar market as well as our monitoring approach.”

He said this after ICCC released a draft report on the sugar industry pricing review, detailing its preliminary findings and recommendations on the future of the sugar price regulation in PNG.

“Sugar is one of the vital commodities in our semi-urban and urban communities in PNG; has become a large part of people’s diet; is also a key production input for other PNG manufacturing companies. As such, the price of sugar is of vital importance to both households and industrial customers.”

Manoka said that under the existing price monitoring arrangement, ICCC only monitored the factory gate price of Ramu sugar supplied by the Ramu Agri Industries Ltd (RAIL) against an independent price benchmark.