The Ministry of Trade and Industry on Tuesday, November 2 launched an inspection among the businesses to curb the speculative prices of milk in a bid to ensure the consumer’s rights are protected. During an initial assessment, nine businesses selling Inyange milk products in the City of Kigali were fined a total of Rwf19.5 million for hiking prices despite the manufacturer maintaining wholesale prices. Hiking of prices, according to the inspectors, violates the consumer protection law. Cassien Karangwa, the director of domestic trade in the Ministry of Trade and Industry revealed their findings during the inspection they carried out. “The price is known and public, but there are distributors from Inyange Industries who took advantage of the shortfalls in dairy production and increased prices and issued a different amount on their invoices,” he revealed to The New Times. Sanctioned businesses include supermarkets, distributors, milk zones, wholesalers and retail shops. Three of the sanctioned businesses were from Nyarugenge district, two in Kicukiro and the other four were from Gasabo district. Some of the retailers claim that they increased the prices because they got the milk expensively from distributors. “One carton of milk ordinarily goes for between Rwf4,800 to 5,200 but the price went up to almost 9,000 from the suppliers. This was very difficult for us because we also had to make a profit,” said Chantal Niyigena, a retailer based in Kigali. She added that they did not know Inyange had maintained the old prices. For the last two months, diary production activities declined nationwide, reportedly caused by the prolonged dry spell. Some milk distributors and traders took advantage of this and hiked the prices, until Inyange limited issued a statement, stating that although dairy production had declined in recent days, prices have not changed. In the year 2020, Rwanda Agricultural Board estimates that 891,326 tons of milk were produced. But from April to September 2021, 132 sampled milk zones have collected 38,731 tons of milk so far.
