Someone in a top management position at Winn Dixie in Grand Bahama needs to provide an explanation for the egregious disparities in prices between some goods they sell and the same items at other food outlets.

As reported in The Freeport News on Monday, an investigation by this newspaper in response to the public outcry over the high prices of food items at Winn Dixie uncovered some differences of as much as $1 between items sold at Winn Dixie and Kross Town on Settler's Way, a popular convenience store.

Generally, the reverse usually is the case, with convenience store prices being slightly higher than the major foodstore chains, but at Winn Dixie a half-gallon of Florida Natural premium orange juice was purchased at the Lucaya store for $5.89, while the same item was obtained from Kross Town for $4.89. The difference was almost just as steep with regard to a half-gallon of Motts Apple Juice, which Winn Dixie sold for $5.39 and Kross Town for $4.49.

That story elicited a number of calls from members of the public, each telling what one person described as her own "horror story of the outrageously high prices at Winn Dixie." She simply could not understand why there are no "laws to prevent this sort of thing from happening."

Another caller, who described herself as a long-time winter resident of Freeport, said she was shocked by some of the prices at Winn Dixie in Lucaya, adding that there is a vast difference in some items that are sold for less at Winn Dixie downtown. She cited as one example a package of "Yucon potatoes," which was purchased downtown for $2.19 and was priced at the Lucaya store at $5.99 the week before last, but last week the price was dropped to $4.99, still considerably higher than downtown.

A native of Germany, who has been coming to The Bahamas during the winter since 1980, she said her maid jokingly told her that the Lucaya prices are higher because it is located in what is considered to be the Beverly Hills of Freeport.

But this is no joking matter. As one shopper interviewed for our investigative story on high prices noted, she can go to Walmart in Florida with $300 and "come out with 110 bags, but here I would only have 10 bag, and a lot of the stuff we buy is duty free."

She may be absolutely correct. There is a long list of food items that are enumerated as being duty free on a Customs Department document entitled "Rates of Duty on Commonly Imported Items." Bacon, evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk, butter, potatoes, grapes, apples, coffee, tea, rice, flour, grits, lard, cooking oil, margarine, canned corn beef, sugar, mayonnaise and canned fish such as tuna and sardines are all duty free. So are meat of bovine animals, sheep or goats, sausages, among other meat products.

All that the merchants has to pay Customs on importing these items is a stamp tax of two percent. Even after shipping costs are added and a reasonable percentage is tacked on to cover overhead expenses and to ensure that the merchant makes a decent profit, there is no reason why food prices should be as outrageously high as they are in Grand Bahama.

There certainly should not be reason at all for the huge disparities in the cost of the same items at a major foodstore chain and a convenience store; other than, of course, unadulterated greed.

There may not be a law against this, but there should be.