The anticompetitive practices allowed by the Material Reserves Agency led to a shortage of wheat at reasonable prices on the market in the first half of 2021. Respectively, some of the producers that asked for wheat from the state reserves consequently increased the selling price of baked products, said the Competition Council, which noted that it informed the Security and Intelligence Service about eventual anticompetitive actions of the Agency when releasing a large batch of food wheat from the state reserve in the first half of this year. The issue was also broadly treated by the media, IPN reports.

In its investigation, the Council said that in July 2020 – April 2021, the restraining of competition by the Material Reserves Agency resulted in the groundless disqualification of enterprises that took part in the contest held in July 2020. Also, the Agency selectively and justifiably applied different procedures for designing beneficiary enterprises to which food wheat was to be released so as to renew the stores. It was also established that the Agency favored by price “Ancom Agro” SRL and offered this privileges for activity on the food wheat sale market.

“The Material Reserves Agency, as the responsible authority, didn’t react promptly to the problems caused by drought last year and this was confirmed also by the giving of late responses to the applicants. But one of the goals of the creation of the state reserves is to ensure the stable functioning of the national economy and to protect the country in emergencies or exceptional situations, in case of social or economic phenomena,” said the Competition Council.

Despite the identified irregularities, the Council formulated only recommendations, advising to amend the normative framework concerning the method of issuing goods from the state reserves so as to respect the competition principles.

After a meeting of the Supreme Security Council in March, President Maia Sandu requested the Government to impose temporary restrictions on the export of wheat from the state reserves. The request was made following reports about the risks related to the export of wheat from the state reserves.

Shortly, the Government banned the export of wheat with the tariff position 1001 from the state reserves until April 12 inclusive. Meanwhile, the then opposition sounded the alarm as to the rise in bread prices, saying the problem derived from the fact that the export of wheat from the state reserves wasn’t stopped following last year’s drought. The director of the Material Reserves Agency was urged to resign.