COMMENTARY: Price Reduction Promise & Scandal

By Yves Ephraim 

Imagine a time when someone tried to put blame on you for something that had nothing to do with you. 

Do you recall how your accuser tried to cover their own mistakes by conveniently omitting important facts for the sole purpose of throwing you under the bus?

The proclamation by government officials that Antigua and Barbuda has the worst retailers in the world, who would stop at nothing for the opportunity to gouge you, feels like “throw-them-under-the-bus” vibes. 

Are you not tired of leaders who believe that the only way to cover their incompetence is to make someone else look bad, even to the point of manufacturing false narratives?

What you are being told about retailers in general, is a manufactured narrative!

You need to look at the facts for yourself and ask yourself who is the true villain in this affair?

Let us examine the timeline and the facts:

1. Caricom agreed that there will be rate reductions on several food items from the 1st of July 2025.

2. The Antigua and Barbuda Cabinet on the 8th of October 2025, approved the reduction of tariffs with the following stipulation that “the Customs and Excise Department, in collaboration with the Ministry of Trade and the Ministry of Legal Affairs, will finalize the HS 2022 documentation for submission to Parliament before December 31, 2025, to ensure implementation effective JANUARY 1, 2026.”

The tariff reductions would be on 48 specific food categories/items which include: 

• Fresh vegetables (e.g. potatoes, carrots, cabbage, broccoli)

• Fresh fruits

• Pulses and legumes (e.g. lentils, chickpeas, black-eyed peas)

• Canned proteins (e.g. sardines, mackerel, corned beef)

• Infant foods and cereals

• Cooking oils (e.g. olive oil, coconut oil, corn oil)

4. Antigua and Barbuda government officially announces to the public that the reductions took effect from the 8th of December, 2025.

5. Most retailers would have purchased and imported stocks in the months prior to December 2025 for the Christmas season and the new year. The retailers would have already paid full taxes for those stocks at the time of the government’s announcement. 

Anyone who knows anything about retail business, knows that it would be improbable to expect an immediate change in prices after the December announcement.

If you were a retail business owner, there are many factors to consider before prices can change, particularly if you own a large retail business.

First, you must allow the old stocks to run down before any new stocks are ordered or sold. To immediately sell the current stocks at a lower price could bankrupt your business since you would not be unable to recoup the 40% duties that you paid upfront to customs on some items.

You know that it is quite typical when dealing in perishable goods to sell the oldest inventory first. This is a practice that exist everywhere in the world.

Another issue is that the government chose the busiest time of the year to force these major changes on your business. 

When the government declared a reduction, you know that there is no way on earth that the reductions could show up in your store overnight, particularly with the rushed way the government went about the process.

You know that your Point of Sale system would have to be updated. 

It would mean identifying all of the items that have tariff changes and spending your time recalculating the price and and costs, while trying to keep your business going. 

You know that all this takes time and the bigger your business, the longer this will take.

This therefore means that most consumers are not likely to see widespread price reductions until February onwards, when new stocks are cleared from customs with the new tariffs. And you are most likely going to get new stock at the end of January or early February.

For the government to reduce the rate of duties and taxes with effect of the 8th December 2025 and promise an immediate price reduction is evidence of the governments pure ignorance of how retail businesses actually work.

You should not be surprised by this dysfunction. The government bungled the implementation of the last revision of the minimum wage just the same. 

It appears to me that some officials of government are conveniently giving the impression that the prices of everything is to be reduced, while failing to remind the citizens that the items below are exempted from the reduction:

“brown rice, salmon, luncheon meat, chicken, pork, herring, tuna, cocoa powder, uncooked pasta, beans, passion fruit juices, grapefruit juices, and other mixed juices.” 

The Antigua and Barbuda government obviously did not consider the reduction of the CET tariffs as a priority, therefore the government dilly-dallied until their own inner circle was crying out for relief from the high tax burden.

Whereas our other Caribbean neighbours were enjoying the reductions in 2025, it took Antigua and Barbuda five months to catch up. What was the government doing all this time?

Providing immediate relief for the suffering people of this country was clearly not a priority for the Antigua and Barbuda government. 

Something clearly got the government’s attention to fast-track the implementation, considering that the Cabinet originally declared that it intended to have the reduction take effect from the 1st of January 2026.

The fact that there is no reduction in prices yet, is purely the fault of the government of Antigua and Barbuda. It is a sign of the dysfunction and inability to act expeditiously since July 2025.

The government’s apparent lack of understanding of the retail business and its naive promise of “immediate” price reductions to consumers, has backfired.

However, instead of being truthful, the government decided to deflect blame by making unfounded claims against ALL retailers, calling them price gougers.

It is so frustrating that the default position is always to deflect blame even if it means telling a lie on others.

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