business Perspective: When in business, the Supply has to meet the Demand

The festive season is over and now it is business as usual. Schools have opened and those with children can tell you how hectic last week was with parents sending their children back to school. In the event of Christmas and the New Year celebrations somebody somewhere either slept on their job, or forgot something. Just imagine going to different places and there is shortage of soft drinks. Does this mean that as people were consuming during these festive times, there was no production going on or something somewhere is going on? Somebody, please, let me understand. This is not something new; it is a trend that I have observed for a few years now. Every time we get out of a festive season, some drinks go missing in shops and anywhere else that they are sold; when you ask, one is told that “zarabuze” meaning there is an acute shortage for that product. This is when the fundamental concepts of economics apply; supply and demand which is the backbone of any market economy. Now going back to books; when we talk about demand; it refers to how much quantity of a product or service is desired by buyers. The quantity demanded is the amount of a product people are willing to buy at a certain price; the relationship between price and quantity demanded is known as the demand relationship. When it comes to supply; it represents how much the market can offer. The quantity supplied refers to the amount of a certain good producers are willing to supply when receiving a certain price. The correlation between price and how much of a good or service is supplied to the market is known as the supply relationship. Price, therefore, is a reflection of supply and demand. And when supply and demand are in balance, the economy is said to be in equilibrium between price and quantity. In some cases when a product goes missing in shelves and the demand exceeds, then there is always the speculation that the prices will most likely go up. But in this case we are yet to be told why the product has gone missing in action. It can be very disappointing, especially at times like this when it is known that due to the festive times people tend to consume more than normal, but unfortunately the routine is still the same year in year out. So, when a time like this is near it makes a lot of sense if productivity is raised, it will be a sensible response to meet the demand during the festive season and immediately thereafter. kayitesius@yahoo.com