The federation of retail traders Fecoderd estimates that over the last four months, 18 basic consumer items have risen in price by an average of 42% and retail sales have fallen by 40% as a result. Fecoderd president Gilberto Luna commented that such price rises were impossible for low-income families to bear and called on the government to take measures to reverse the trend. Meat, beans, rice, eggs and oil have experienced the sharpest increases, according to the retailers’ figures, whose percentage of 42% is well above the Central Bank’s 13% inflation calculation for that period. Meanwhile, the papers report that the dollar is on the rise again against the peso, costing just over RD$35, after the downward trend of the earlier part of this week.