Ramadan has long been a time when food retailers boosted their prices, with the largest increases coming in the run-up to and thorough the Eid holiday season. It has been an imposition with which the majority of Saudi consumers has learned to put up. Certainly during the holiday, for most the joy and delight in the celebrations overwhelms the fact that the food that is spread so generously on family tables, has cost sometimes significantly more than usual.

At other times of the year, as recently, with what is now widely accepted as the manipulation of chicken prices by wholesalers and traders, consumers are prepared to call foul, or perhaps more appropriately “fowl.” However, such protests have been rare and have normally only occurred in the face of quite noticeable price hikes. Largely ignored has been what some economists here have marked down as a slow and insidious boost to food prices in particular, above and beyond their production cost.

Now though, the business of the Ramadan price rises seems about to face a serious challenge from consumers, who plan to turn to social media to name and shame retailers that are, in their opinion, caught out in outrageous profiteering.

The plan is that from the first day of the holy month, campaigners will check prices against the norm and using all the online messaging tools now available, via local coordination committees, will build up a Kingdomwide picture of what is really going on with prices. Working with the slogan “Think of the Poor,” the organizers say they will not simply be targeting the obvious culprits, the food retailers, but also looking at real estate agencies, car dealers and other businesses.

As grass roots efforts go, this is a highly commendable program, which hopefully will cause some traders to lower their prices, if only to seek a competitive advantage in what, every year, is very much a seller’s market.

Nor should it be overlooked that the seasonal price increases actually impact on the inflation rate. This is expected to finish the year at something over four percent according to new figures from the Council of Saudi Chambers which recorded a 3.9 percent rise in the first calendar quarter of 2013. Given our strong growth rate, which registered six percent last year, such an increase is inflation is far from unmanageable. However within the overall figure there are hidden spikes which are causing real hardship, especially to young families. The most outstanding sector is in housing, where rents continue to rise and freehold prices are growing even more strongly, thus keeping more and more young people from getting a first foot on the property ladder.

However the whole housing issue points up the key mechanism at work here, in food retail every bit as much as in property. This issue is the economists’ staple measure — supply and demand. As Ramadan approaches or even more pertinently as preparations begin for the Eid holiday, families hurry out to seek the best foodstuff that they can afford. Even allowing for merchants increasing their stock in anticipation of this increased demand, there is still likely to be a mismatch between the goods available on the shelves and the amount that consumers will wish to purchase. Think for a moment of the position of the wholesalers and the retailers. Neither wishes to make the mistake of over-buying in advance of the holy month and subsequent holiday. They do not want to find themselves holding unsold luxury items when life and domestic appetites return to normal. Therefore, surely it is far better for them to run inventories that they know that they can sell, at better prices?

It may seem grossly unfair from the consumers’ perspective, but this is what business is all about. Indeed, it was ever thus. The rules of supply and demand were at work hundreds of years before economics were invented and economists sat down and worked out their theories on the subject.

Consumers, it would seem, have only one answer to the annual price hikes and that is the freezer. Much of the food that we will put on our tables could very easily be bought now, before Ramadan and frozen, prepared or in its raw state, against the holidays. Careful planning ought to ease the Ramadan effect on domestic budgets. Buy while the market is cheap, avoid last minute shopping and you ought to ensure that your holiday feasts will not cost you and arm and a leg. If this approach catches on, then the only concern has to be an increase in the pre-Ramadan cost of freezers.