On Tuesday, Cabinet also asked that the Minister of Agriculture, Food Security, and Enterprise instruct the Bureau of Standards to investigate reports of price gouging at stores across Belize. As we reported previously, while some of these price hikes may be a result of international factors, on Monday, Prime Minister John Brice�o told the hosts of Open Your Eyes that his government will ensure stores are not unfairly overcharging.

Prime Minister John Brice�o

"Many factories when there's a COVID outbreak, they have to shut down until they clean up and get ready. Also, it has created a backlog. Shipping has gone up. People are waiting months before they are able to get their products from the factories because they are not producing like before. And because it is limited, you know what happens, right. When we only have one and five ah we want, we start to bid for the price. So that is completely out of our control, unfortunately. I wish I can tell you that it is something that we can control but it is out of our control that these prices continue to go up more and more. What we can do is to work - and we've already spoken with Minister Mai, who has Supplies Control as part of his portfolio - to speak with the people there and to see how we can do some sort of monitoring to ensure that there's not price gouging, but simply because the prices continue to go up."

Channel 5