The products are in eight groups: food and beverages, consumer goods, electric appliances, transportation goods, construction, petroleum, agricultural products and miscellaneous.

Caretaker Deputy Commerce Minister Preecha Laohapongchana said the 30 items brought the number of products on the watch list to 200.

The listed products include pepper, soybean sauce, chicken dips, tomato sauce, chilli sauce, cotton buds, stain remover, floor and furniture cleaners, hair gel, food mixers, wheels, aluminium pipes, cement pipes, concrete and cement floors, oil tanks, car petrol, plastic bags, rubbish bags, plastic wrapping, tractors, motorised lawn mowers, grass clippers, spades and gold ornaments.

The department will start monitoring the additional 30 goods every two or three days. Manufacturers of these products who want to increase their retail prices must submit requests to the ministry for approval.

"If we find unusual price increases, we will order manufacturers to report to us their production costs to make sure the changes represent a fair practice and a fair price," Preecha said.

Violators will be subjected to a stringent punishment of a maximum five years in jail and/or fines of Bt100,000.

Preecha said that the ministry had to add products to decrease the burden on consumers during the period of rising oil prices.

He added that the ministry included gold on the watch list since receiving complaints of price increases from the beginning of the year.

Under the ministry's price control measures, increases will be allowed for goods hardest hit by escalating oil prices. The measure is to enable the ministry to control the country's inflation rate at a suitable level.

The ministry has projected that the country will log a 4.5 to 5 per cent inflation rate this year.

The inflation rate was 3.8 per cent in August.

Inflation for the first eight months of the year was 5.5 per cent.

Petchanet Pratruangkrai

The Nation