Consumer Council says more needs to be done to ensure that tax and duty reduction are passed down to consumers

The Consumer Council says more needs to be done to ensure that the taxes and duties that are reduced in the 2018/2019 National Budget are passed down to the consumers.

Year in year out there have been cases of government announcing tax and duty reductions but people have continued to raise concern that retailers are not dropping the prices to reflect the reductions.

This is an ongoing issue and even the Minister for Economy, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum has raised concerns on this in the past.

Council CEO, Premila Kumar says if the government wants to ensure that the price reductions are passed down to the consumers then it should put those items under price control.

Meanwhile the use of false impressions to hype property buyers and sellers by certain real estate agents has drawn the concern of the council. 

Kumar says they understand there are certain agents who deliberately manipulate property prices by using pressure selling tactics and other gimmicks to get higher prices for commission.

She says a lack of authority given to the Real Estate Licensing Board to oversee sales and purchases of properties in the country allows the issue to fester. 

Kumar says a Real Estate company had claimed to list the most number of properties on the market but only 10 out of 68 advertised properties had marked prices.

The council also found some properties had already been sold but were still advertised to give an impression that the company had a large market share. 

Kumar says the council found that some companies had solicited bids through an auction with no supervision into how the offers are managed.

This raised doubts on whether the auction actually occurred or if it was a scheme to manipulate prices. 

The council also established that some property advertisements did not disclose the type of land and in some cases even the location was not given, defeating the purpose of the advertisement. 

The CEO says the real estate sector in Australia and New Zealand  sets a very good example which Fiji can benchmark against.

They have an online ‘one stop shop’, where a person has access to important information such as: properties recently sold in a particular suburb/locality; price ranges or actual price of property being sold, which can enable them to know the price range; features of properties that is being put on the market and; the agent brokering the deal. 

Kumar says Fiji can take a cue from this by adapting the system to meet our needs. 

Minister for Economy, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum will deliver the 2018/2019 National Budget in parliament from 7.30pm tonight.

Stay with us to find out how the budget will affect your pockets and the government’s ministerial allocations to provide services to the public.

We will have all the details on which taxes and duties go up or down and how it will affect you.