A groundbreaking buy-supply forum for international trade facilitated by the Commonwealth Secretariat to tackle ethical trading is in the pipeline for this year.
The meeting, set for mid-June, will see industry players from across the supply chain come together at the Commonwealth headquarters in London, to tackle the balance of power in the market.
Stuart Symington, chief executive of the Fresh Produce Exporters’ Forum (FPEF) in South Africa, is spearheading the drive for an impartial platform to safeguard trading relationships for the future. He has linked up with Sujeevan Perera, trade adviser to the Commonwealth Secretariat, to make the two-day event happen.
He told FPJ: “This is so that supermarkets, suppliers and growers can discuss directly what their problems are, because they are being swept under the carpet. I have spoken to the divisional heads of the Commonwealth and we are trying to get a dialogue going…
“We are not trying to point the finger at any one institution, but we are trying to address the achilles heel of capitalism.”
He listed the National Farmers’ Union, the Fresh Produce Consortium, Freshfel, the Office of Fair Trading, Ethical Trade UK and Action Aid UK as organisations he would like to see at the meeting, alongside representatives from all the major multiples, as well as suppliers and growers.
Perera told FPJ: “We are trying to get the maximum input from the UK. The idea is to formulate a blueprint of how we can move forward.”
The International Trade Centre in Geneva invited Symington to attend the World Development Forum in Switzerland in October to speak on ethical trade, following his involvement with a week-long Tesco Ethical Trade Workshop.
He claimed at the event that there are a litany of supermarket buying practices that are “certainly not in the public’s interest”, including selling below cost price, over-procuring product and finding excuses to reject unwanted product, giving late price indications, playing one supplier off against another and charging erroneous costs on sales accounts.
He called on the United Nations and the International Trade Centre to establish a buy-supply forum for international trade.
Symington said: “Just as the financial sector has gone unchecked and wreaked havoc in the world today, so too can the retail sector inflict similar damage - if left unchecked…
“We have seen - in eight years - two benign findings from the UK Competition Commission on the behaviour of their own retailers, and supplying countries are powerless to intervene for fear of commercial reprisals. This leaves the globalising retail behemoths to operate in what is essentially a regulatory void. Unfortunately, unfettered free market capitalism has no answer for globalising multinationals that operate beyond the reach of the law.”
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