The Confederation of Zimbabwe Retailers (CZR) president, Denford Mutashu, has urged retailers to desist from unilateral price hikes to avoid problems with authorities.
Mutashu was speaking at a joint meeting between the Grain Millers Association of Zimbabwe (GMAZ), the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe (CCZ) and local retailers in Mutare on Monday. He said:
The retailers will have to be responsible and fair in their pricing. As Confederation of Zimbabwe Retailers, we are on record saying we don’t defend mediocrity and bad behaviour. We also don’t defend irresponsibility on the part of traders.
What we are doing is to make sure we engage. The engagement process has taken us countrywide and in addition to that, we have identified gaps in consumer education so we are going to be together with the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe.
We will go across the country together, educating the consumers as a critical stakeholder with information so that they have the knowledge and will not be shortchanged. In the current dynamics, it’s quite unfortunate that there has been a lot of distortions.
Retailers of late have been raising prices of products with reckless abandon, with prices of some products doubling overnight.