I enjoyed a column in the Financial Mail about how South Africans are paying 2,3 times the price that a Nespresso system sells for in London. I found this to be particularly true of digital equipment as well as clothes.

The same women’s shoes, for example, that are being given away on sale in London, because they cannot be sold, can retail for three times the price in a shopping mall in South Africa and T-shirts which literally cost R70,00 in America, get resold in South Africa for R200,00. Of course there are taxes, profits and expenses involved in getting goods to South Africa but please don’t forget that R70,00 is a retail price, and one would assume that the local distributors could get a wholesale price in any event further increasing their profits. The simple answer is in my opinion that there is not enough competition in South Africa and that is why the prices we pay, ranging from cars to T-shirts, are so inflated.