Outrageous price hike of toiletries

One wonders if there are many countries where prices of detergent have tripled over the past five years. Bangladesh, a land of impossibilities, however has to its credit this dubious distinction. No, there was no report on manifold increase in the demand for this item because people suddenly went mad about getting their clothes cleaned; or that the companies producing those were failing to meet the demand. Then it is not the detergent alone, almost all items of cosmetics and toiletries have registered a price hike ranging between 80 and 150 per cent. Manufacturers of all such items of day-to-day use argue that dearer imported raw materials together with inflation have been responsible for this price rise. Have the raw materials used for detergent become abnormally pricier? Year-on-year inflation rate has rarely crossed the doubled digit. The president of the Consumers Association of Bangladesh (CAB) has quite legitimately thrown a challenge before the manufacturers of toiletries to the effect that they would not be able to prove in one single case that raw materials have increased a 100 per cent increase in the past five years.

So this is a cause for serious concern. Utility services raise the price of their commodities and services not before a public hearing. But in the case of cosmetics and toiletries, the business of which is mostly monopolised now by a few multinational companies, prices are hiked without any prior announcement. They do so often arbitrarily. It is a free market only in the name. Here the business sharks rule the roost and put poor consumers at their mercy. Well, they spend fat amount of money on advertisement and promotion so that their business empire can run unhindered. If farm produces, produced by farmers by the sweat of their brow, have not registered even 30 per cent price hike over the past five years, it is outrageous and totally unjustified to raise prices of toiletries and cosmetics to the skyrocketing level. Now that people have become more concerned about personal health and sanitation, the use and sale of toiletries has also gone up several folds. If business is so brisk, small margin of profit is enough for the producers to prosper in the trade.

Unfortunately, in this country this simple law of commerce is distorted flagrantly. The motive is to fleece consumers as much as possible. There should be a rational assessment of the whole production process so that the gap between production cost and the market price is not left abnormally wide. This is simple arithmetic. But the problem here is that the controlling authority has long surrendered to the whims of manufacturing companies and businesspeople. Here is a sellers' market and over time business 'syndicates' have become an established fact in the area of manufacture, commerce and trade. Now there is an overriding need for reining in these galloping horses in view of the fact that they are making profits beyond all rational limits. This is urgent for market stability as well as making the country's currency and economy strong and stable.