Government will monitor sunflower oil price hikes

After monitoring prices on bread and milk, the Government decided to check the way sunflower oil prices have been raised. On Friday, October 19, Prime Minister Vasile Tarlev requested the Ministry of Economy and Trade to conduct a thorough analysis of the situation in the domestic market and come up with relevant conclusions and recommendations. In Tarlev’s words, the Government has been lately receiving a multitude of complaints from elderly persons who reported hikes in sunflower oil prices. The Premier said that based on the data from the National Statistics Bureau sunflower oil prices didn’t rise more than by 9 percent and was surprised to find out that some vendors at the Central Market in Chisinau raised its price by over 60 percent, from 14 lei to 23 lei a litre. Vasile Tarlev said the Government will accept these boosts only if vendors provide plausible arguments; otherwise it will step in to lower the prices and punish the guilty. Earlier, IMF Resident Representative Johan Mathisen urged the Government to try to find more efficient measures than the practice of controlling bread prices. In economic terms, administering prices, such as on bread, is very inefficient, Mathisen said. According to analyst Igor Gutan, the Government Decision No.547 of 04.08.95 concerning the governmental leverages in coordinating and regulating prices runs counter to the official declarations regarding the free market nature of the Moldovan economy as well as to the Constitution, explaining that article 6 of the law on entrepreneurship and enterprises says that the economic entities have the right to fix, independently, the prices and tariffs of the products made (works carried out and services provided) by them under the signed contracts.