It is a good initiative what the UHM has undertaken with regard to price fluctuations. But the problem of price hikes goes deeper than that, and one just cannot always place it under the carpet by blaming everything on international prices.

Talking from experience, prices in Germany, nine months prior to adopting the euro, rose by up to 17.6 per cent on groceries, medicines and household goods in general, the same in Italy, France and so on.

The same is happening here in Malta. The price of a medicine that falls under the Drug Act Regulations and must be purchased only from St Luke’s hospital, overnight rose from Lm5 to Lm7, a whopping 40 per cent for 200 pills. On asking why such a high increase, no one could give me an answer.

A chemist friend of mine in the UK assured me that there was no increase on the price of this medicine, so what is going on?

A 17.9 per cent increase on pasta is no laughing matter, and the list goes on. Check the hike on the price of butter and cheese – the increase is astronomical.

A kilo of sub-standard cheddar is Lm2.75 dearer than in the UK, the price of some Scandinavian butter is unreachable to the average wage earner. As has been said by so many tourists, some of the goods prices in Malta are staggering. How do you manage? No matter what the NECC, says the matter is already out of hand.

The price of crude oil is another matter. OPEC is a dominant cartel that cannot be touched; we all remember how they took the world for a ride in the 1970s and the 1980s, and the same is happening today, and it will go on unless we will find an alternative. But then the alternative (Bio-Diesel) is the cause that has led to the explosion of the price of wheat, hence, the prices on bread and pasta.

You win some and lose more.

Laurence Schembri

Gudja