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Trade Competition Council checks companies applying price cuts for essential foods
The Trade Competition Council has started an extensive action to see the extent to which the commercial companies are applying the provisions of an emergency ordinance on combating price increases for some agricultural and food products and will make a comparative analysis of the current shelf prices versus prices before the issuance of the ordinance, Chairman of the Competition Authority Bogdan Chiritoiu told AGERPRES on Tuesday.
"We have started an extensive action to see to what extent the commercialcompanies are applying the provisions of the emergency ordinance that sets up some measures of a temporary nature to combat price gauging for agricultural and food products. Based on the information received from the companies and the data that we have collected so far with the help of the Price Monitoring platform, we will make a comparative analysis of the current shelf prices versus those before the issuance of the ordinance. I think that at the end of this week we will have the first results," added Chiritoiu.
He said that the monitoring action will continue and the Trade Competition Council will collaborate with the Ministry of Agriculture and the National Tax Administration Agency and, depending on the results, there will be discussions with the government to see what measures are required.
Markups on 14 groups of food products will be capped for three months from today under an emergency ordinance halting increases in prices for essential foods approved by the government on of June 30, 2023.
The foods are: simple white bread; fresh cow's milk 1.5% fat, 1 liter; bulk cow's telemea cheese; plain cow's milk yogurt, fat 3.5%, maximum 200 grams; white wheat flour "000" 1 kg; coarse flour 1 kg; M caliber chicken eggs 10 pieces; sunflower oil 1 liter; fresh chicken meat (whole chicken, chicken cutlets, whole bone-in chicken legs, chicken wings); fresh pork (processed meat, pork leg with and without bone, pork loin); fresh vegetables in bulk (tomatoes, cucumbers, yellow onions, dried beans, carrots, bell peppers, kapia peppers); fresh fruit in bulk (red and golden apples, plums, watermelon, table grapes); fresh white potatoes in bulk; caster white sugar 1 kg.
The shelf price formation procedure for these products has to be uniform, both for the producers' private brand products and for the retailer's own brand products. The markups are charged on the value of the provided agricultural and food products exclusive of VAT.
Failure to comply with the provisions is a contravention, unless committed under such conditions that, under the criminal law, it is a criminal offence punishable by a fine of between RON 100,000 and RON 2,000,000.
