Measures aimed at reining in businesses that attempt to stifle fairness or rig the system got guarded support in principle from the Lindo’s supermarket chain — but the company said that in practice the proposal risked adding another regulatory level that would hit businesses with extra compliance costs.

The group urged the Government not to proceed with the suggested Competition Act 2026 in its present form, but to “amend sector legislation where the problem is sector-specific”.

The company also stated that it was “important to distinguish concentration from monopoly” in reviewing the island’s market landscape, rather than “create a presumption of wrongdoing” under the Act.

Public consultation on the issue under a policy document ends tomorrow.

It came as seniors advocates Age Concern stated that proposals laid out in the document, Promoting Competition and Market Fairness in Bermuda, needed to recognise that “stronger regulatory powers must be matched by a system that ordinary consumers can easily access and understand”.

Age Concern’s executive director, Mercedes Pringle-DeSilva, said the group supported protection for consumers, but added: “Our interest is in ensuring that the new system combines regulatory strength with accessibility, responsiveness and person-centred support.”

The charity called on the Government to ensure that “older adults and other consumers continue to have access to telephone, face-to-face and paper-based options alongside digital services” when it came to reviewing a breakdown of costs — with “an expedited pathway for complaints involving healthcare, medication, essential services, suspected financial exploitation or serious financial hardship”.

Lindo’s queried whether the elaborate administrative regime proposed was “a proportionate response to the problems that have actually been identified in Bermuda”, suggesting that a streamlined “market fairness and unfair trade practices framework” would be more nimble at confronting “abuse of dominant market power without creating a regulatory structure that may be disproportionate to Bermuda’s size”.

In a statement shared with The Royal Gazette, the company said that a high concentration under certain businesses could be a factor of the island’s size and small consumer market, rather than “anticompetitive conduct”.

Lindo’s also countered the view that rising grocery prices necessarily meant unfair practices — linking the sharpest increase in food inflation in 2022 to “the extraordinary post-pandemic inflationary period”.

The grocer chain said the consultation document failed to provide evidence that there was “collusion, price fixing, market allocation, excessive margins or similar anticompetitive conduct among Bermuda’s grocery retailers”.

Lindo’s also maintained that grocery price regulation proved “particularly difficult in practice”, given the complexity of the business and range of factors with an impact on the price tag of a product.

“There is a real risk that regulation intended to reduce the cost of living instead increases the cost of doing business and ultimately contributes to the very price pressures it was designed to address,” the statement said.

The Lindo’s Group was also sceptical that pharmaceutical costs were driven by “a competitive failure among pharmacies” — although it found “legitimate” concern in the insurer Allshores, created by merger, requiring clients to get coverage for certain high-cost medications only through Phoenix Pharmacies.

The company suggested that the Government could take the approach of amending health insurance rules rather than resorting to sweeping legislation.

Lindo’s argued that existing regulators could be directed at “defined prohibited conduct without simultaneously establishing an extensive merger-control, mandatory-market-study and sector-surveillance framework”.

The company maintained that an overly elaborate Act could impose “significant compliance expenses” on businesses, and said mandatory analysis of various market sectors ought to come with “evidence of need” first.

“There may be circumstances in which some prospective merger-review capability is desirable,” the statement said.

“However, if Government concludes that such powers are necessary, we recommend that they be narrowly designed.”

Lindo’s noted that businesses would be able to challenge a regulatory move through the Supreme Court, but said simpler and less expensive reviews should be an option.

While the company said it supported cutting the island’s cost of living, it said similar concerns should be raised when “the cost of administering government programmes and regulatory systems increases”.