Prime Minister Shimon Peres went shopping today in a Jerusalem supermarket to study at first hand the effects of the price freeze instituted this week. He said he was “very encouraged on the whole, “both by the general implementation and by consumers’ reactions.
He conceded, though, that there were initial difficulties and said these were inevitable, given that this was a novel and untried method of combatting inflation.
The price freeze on all goods and services was promulgated by Ministry of Commerce regulations and will stay in effect till January 5. It is is part of the government-Histadrut-manufactures “package deal” which was formally signed last night in the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem. The deal provides that wages and profits as well as taxes will also be frozen for the three-month period.
SOME PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED
Among the problems which Peres and many other shoppers encountered today were mistakes in the published lists of authorized maximum prices. The lists were issued last night by the Commerce Ministry and appeared in today’s Maariv and Yediot Achrono. They cover close to 500 items which officials say represent some 80 percent of the average family’s regular outlay.
In some cases, shopkeepers found the published prices too high: they said they were selling the goods considerably cheaper. In other cases the prices were said to be too low.
The ministry promised a revised list during the day. But it rejected a widely prevalent complaint from shopkeepers that the stated price for sugar — 149 Shekels a kilo — was too low. The shopkeepers claimed they paid the wholesalers more than that. But the ministry insisted that 149 Shekels was a fair retail price.
Peres told shoppers he would not hesitate to permit “immediate import” of competitive goods if he found any local manufacturer exploiting the ban on some imports to hike the prices of his locally-manufactured product. He urged the public to study the lists of permitted prices — and insist on enforcement of the freeze.
The general rule pertaining to items not listed in the newspapers is that their price as of last Friday, November 2, must be maintained unchanged throughout the freeze period.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
