Aboriginal Investment Group, formed by the Northern Land Council in 1988, points to the takeover of the Barunga community store as a success story.

AIG says it wants to build an Indigenous owned supply chain for all independent stores.

That supply chain would be headquartered in Katherine, along with the shopfront.

The store would also provide Indigenous employment with a training facility.

AIG said independents store management groups manage almost half of the stores in the NT, they operate independently of each other, using their own supply chains.

AIG's advice is among more than 100 submissions made to the Federal Parliament's Indigenous Affairs Committee into whether decent food is being sold at reasonable prices.

AIG said if two litres of milk can be sold in a community store in the Northern Territory for $7.95 in June 2020, then efforts to improve food security for Indigenous communities had failed.

"We welcome this inquiry because we believe that despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent to improve the accessibility and affordability of nutritious food in remote communities, there are still serious issues with pricing and food security in remote stores.

"Remote community stores suffer from the tyranny of distance, with very few regulators travelling to remote community regions to ensure Indigenous consumers are provided with the same level of protection as other Australians."

AIG believes the solution to claims over price gouging was simple - force the stores to publish all their prices online, similar to the fuel watch concept.

The group's submission said AIG began working with remote store owners in 2013.

"... since then have seen many examples of the following concerning practises - unreasonably high prices, poor quality food, poor quality products, limited product range, lack of inclusion of community members and store committees in governance."

The group was critical of the Federal Government-owned Outback Stores saying it had made official complaints about some stores managed by them.

It said it has raised these complaints with the National Indigenous Australian Agency and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

It was particularly critical of the use of rebates to underpin their operations when their competitors could not.

AIG was one of the groups which addressed the inquiry earlier in the month.

The inquiry continues.

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