Government
Grocery Store Price Check; TCI Department of Trade, Industry & Fair Competition reports findings
By Dana Malcolm
Staff Writer
#TurksandCaicos, March 6, 2023 – The Government has provided residents with a price report on bread basket food items weeks before the tax break on them is set to end, but it is not very revealing.
The effort to provide residents with the information, while admirable, lacks substance with no information on pre-inflation prices or prices in the midst of inflation which would have provided useful comparison when reviewing February 2023 prices.
Not only were year on year comparisons missing, but so were store against store.
The report, published on March 3, 2023 exposed that prices across the supermarkets for each island were not comparable because Government agents often recorded the prices on different sizes of each item (e.g. a 20lb bag of rice vs a 5lb bag) likely out of necessity due to the slight variations between brands and sizes in the stores themselves. 
Across the stores they monitored several bread basket items between February 5th and 20th including rice, grits, energy drinks, baby food, bread and more.
In Provo at the investigated stores: Graceway Cash and Carry, GracewayGourmet, GK Foods (Leeward Highway), Graceway Smart, Graceway IGA, Sunny Foods (Five CaysRoad), Quality Food World, Sam’s Club, Kishco, Charlie’s, Do It Center, Business Solutions, and KB Home Center there were both increases and decreases in prices on specially exempted goods. The overwhelming majority of prices for items across the grocery stores remained unchanged for the short time period the review was conducted, barring eggs, which finally experienced a major decreases all around.
The same was true in North Caicos where My Dee’s, Dard’s Grocery, KJs Food Store and Niques Supermarket were investigated.
The trend was repeated in Grand Turk at Graceway IGA, Grand Turk store, Do it Center, KB Home Center and Kishco and in South Caicos at Super Value supermarket and Seaview Market.
The report is the first since the Government announced that food inflation rose 38 percent in March last year. The Government has not said whether any evidence of price gouging has been found but based on the presented data over the short time period, prices remained steady.
TCIG has indicated that, like their fuel reports, this will be a continuous process where they check for price gouging in select stores across the islands under their Compliance and Regulatory Enforcement (CARE) drive.
The initial tax break on bread basket items ends on March 31st for the Turks and Caicos Islands.