In recent weeks, Caribbean governments, and indeed governments in many developing countries, must have been dreading what has happened in Haiti. For the apparently spontaneous resort to the streets by the Haitian population has brought into clear relief the inability of many of these countries to cope with what seems to be the relatively sudden and dramatic increases in the prices of food commodities. Governments have been caught on the backfoot, so to speak, and have even found difficulty in explaining to their citizens the causes of what has happened.
Governments have been loathe to do what people are calling for – to introduce price controls – since almost all states now subscribe to the notion that free market relations, in these days of liberalized open economies, prevent recourse to such measures. If price controls have been introduced, these have been in a limited range of commodities; governments preferring instead to take the hit on the revenue side by reducing the tariffs which they have had on certain critical food items.
