Chairperson, I want to respond to the statement by Mr Lucas and to agree with him that the phenomenon he described is indeed a worrying one. The moment an imported item's price goes up, all other users of these inputs put up their prices. But the moment the price goes down, well, then there is a long delay and a lot of stickiness in prices going down.
He is quite correct that there are other factors at work here, including the change in the value of the currency, and so on. But I think that in general this is a significant problem we are concerned about. As Mr Lucas knows, we don't have any generalised price control in this country. So there is nothing we can do directly in terms of this. But I just want to say that through legislation passed in Parliament this year, we have strengthened the Competition Act. As the Ministry of Trade and Industry, we will be encouraging an energetic and proactive approach by the competition authorities, more so than they have been doing up to now, to look at any cases of collusion or where collusion is responsible for this situation and is keeping prices unfairly high.
We have also introduced consumer legislation which should strengthen the hands of consumers. I think we must be willing to use these instruments energetically in the interests of our people and to combat a situation where ordinary consumers are not going to benefit from a reduction in the oil price in particular. Thank you very much.