Commission for Protection of Economic Competition initiates proceedings
in vegetable oil, butter, medicine and domestic appliance markets
1
YEREVAN, MARCH 6, NOYAN TAPAN. At the March 6 sitting, the RA State
Commission for Protection of Economic Competition decided to initiate
proceedings in 4 markets on suspicion of groundlessly raising prices,
creating artificial deficits and reaching anticompetition agreements by
economic entities. Proceedings were initiated in the markets of
vegetable oil, butter, medicines and domestic appliances.
The Commission’s Chairman Ashot Shahnazarian said at a briefing
following the sitting that alarm calls about high fluctiations of
prices had been received from Yerevan and various marzes. According to
him, in particular, inflation tendencies were quite high in the
medicine market, which is not substantiated by any economic factors.
In his words, it became known that the importers of medicines had
agreed to raise the prices of all kinds of medicines by 25%. He assured
those present that from March 7 – after the stabilization of
dram-dollar ratio, prices will fall in all shops. In particular, the
price of gasoline will fall by 10 drams, while the wholesale supply
price of granulated sugar will fall to 250 drams.
A. Shahnazarian said that the situation is still somewhat worrying in
the marzes (provinces) where the level of prices is a bit higher than
in the capital city. He announced that the Commission cooperates with
the State Revenue Committee to deal with this problem: the list of
shops with inappropriately high prices is given to the State Revenue
Committee that will check the filfilment of tax liabilities by these
shops.
As regards the growth in prices of domestic products, the Commission’s
chairman explained that it is conditioned by imported raw materials.
"The problem is by how much their prices have grown. Today we control
mechanical aspirations of economic entities in terms of abusing a
dominating position and reaching an anticompetition agreement," he said.