Objection To Rise In Biscuit Prices

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31830, 7 November 1968, Page 5

Objection To Rise In Biscuit Prices

(N.Z. Press Association) AUCKLAND, Oct. 6. The Campaign Against Rising Prices (C.A.R.P.) has told its members to stop buying biscuits as a protest against recent price increases.

The president of the Auckland branch of the organisation, Mrs F. A. Humphries, has written to the Minister of Industries and Commerce (Mr Marshall) asking for some justification of the increases. Most lines of biscuits will rise by not more than 1c a packet in the increase announced on Friday. Mrs Humphris said Mr Marshall had stated that it was inevitable that after a general wage order there would be some price increases.

“We find the increases in the price of biscuits hard to reconcile with this,” she said. “There has been a recent decrease in the price of flour and the price of sugar has not increased.

“Our organisation is also concerned with the accepted premise that all wage increases should be passed on

without investigation of the ability of the particular industry to absorb the Whole, or at least part of the increased cost “This concern has led us to take up with Mr Holyoake the question of what constitutes a fair profit and we have also written to him,” Mrs Humphries said.