By Sanath Nanayakkare
It was encouraging to see the benefits of effective supply chain management had enabled the end-consumer to buy quality fresh produce and other essential food products at reasonable prices, today, compared to decades ago, Central Bank Governor Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe said at Akuregoda, Pelawatte yesterday.
The Governor said so delivering the keynote address as the Chief Guest at an event to declare open the 500th outlet of Cargills Food City.
“Decades ago, there was a lot of concern among the consumers about the middleman operation making everything more expensive. But today supermarkets such as Cargills Food City has been able to remove those hidden costs in the middleman operations, thanks to their direct transactions with the farmer and also their involvement in quality food processing. It is obvious that the quality of local food products have improved over the years to the extent that they are similar in look and quality of well-known foreign brands.
“Such a service is so useful at a time food inflation has hit 95%. Sometimes we see that although the rupee has depreciated by about 70%, prices of some goods have increased by 300%-400%. This happens when there is no competition in those segments. However, we don’t see that enormous increase in prices where local companies have made the right kind of intervention to adopt supply chain management practices to reduce the gap between cost of production and end-consumer prices.”
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