His Excellency Sultan Bin Saeed Al Mansoori, Minister of Economy has launched today during the 1st meeting of the Supreme Committee for Consumer Protection for 2012, the Electronic System for Goods Monitoring which connects the Ports & Customs and the Ministry of Economy and centres of major retailers, enabling the Ministry to counter any attempts at potential monopoly.
The new goods monitoring system has the capacity to monitor the prices of 200 commodities on a daily basis.
The Ministry has recently undertaken a pilot phase with some commodities and the results were generalized for other goods.
H.E Al Mansoori said the new goods monitoring system contributes to the stabilization of consumer prices in the UAE and the continued flow of commodities and predict crises that may occur in the future at both local and global levels, as well as provide policy makers and analysts with the latest available information on all aspects of the lack of supply quantities in order to take the appropriate decision.
Commenting on the implementation plan of the new goods monitoring system, Al Mansoori said that the Ministry of Economy developed an integrated plan to implement the system smoothly and effectively, taking into account the future plans to expand the system and the introduce of new commodities.
Al Mansoori stressed the importance of this goods monitoring system that guide consumers to cheaper outlets, pointing out that these outlets includes more than 80% of the retail market in the country. He stressed that the system is linked with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), to identify global commodity prices to find out any possible rise.
He explained that most goods that are monitored according to the goods monitoring system are: rice, wheat, poultry, sugar, milk, tea, meat, eggs, oils and fish », pointing out that the outlets that are monitored include cooperative societies in the UAE and its branches, Lulu Hypermarket, Carrefour, Spinneys.
Mr Al Mansoori said the Electronic System for Goods Monitoring is proceeding according to the induction number of common goods, or what is known (bar code) for each commodity either local or global, as the system allows access on the item at retail outlets in the UAE, and find out their prices and quantities received from customs, or the volume of production locally, and the proportion of the quantities that were sold, adding that the system will provide on weekly basis the prices of basic food commodities globally, and the wholesale price, according to the import bills, which are submitted to the customs ports permanently.
