Moldovan Post accused of imposing abuse conditions for press distribution

The Association of Independent Press (API) demands the authorities to intervene in order to remove the abusive conditions for the distribution of newspapers and magazines imposed by the state enterprise “Posta Moldovei”. The Association sent a petition in this regard to the Government, the Parliament and to the National Agency for the Protection of Competition (ANPC), Info-Prim Neo reports. In the petition, API states that despite the efforts made over the last years for the development of a civilized dialogue between publishers and the Moldovan post, which is the main press distributor in the country, the latter company continues to behave as a monopolist that doesn’t negotiate the fees with the printed press publishers and offers no economic justification for increasing fees. API communicates that on August 24 the general director of the company issued an order approving the increase of fees for the distribution of periodicals, beginning on January 2013. Through the same order, the director approved excessive fees, according to API, for so-called additional services – providing information about subscriptions and subscribers, including the newspapers in the subscription catalogue, distributing the newspaper supplements, etc. The Association of Independent Press says that these increased fees will be a big blow to the economic capacity of publishers of printed press, who won’t have other choice than to raise the price of subscriptions, a measure that will affect readers, as most of them have a reduced buying capacity. API demanded the Government to oblige “Posta Moldovei” to annul the order regarding the increase of the distribution fees and future changes of fees to be negotiated with the printed press publishers or with the organizations of publishers. ANPC was called to inspect the legality of the methodology for calculating fees employed by the company and by other press distributors in Moldova. Alexandra Turcan, head of the division for press distribution at “Posta Moldovei”, told Info-Prim Neo that the fees were set according to methodological calculations. “I think the fees are calculated fairly and I’m not sure if they even cover the expenses for subscriptions, for the catalogue, for the transportation and distribution of newspapers. I don’t think the editorial offices are constrained in any way or that they cannot negotiate with the post office”, she said. Alexandra Turcan stressed that the company maintained the same fees for over two years, while most of the newspapers increased the subscription fees. “We distributed newspapers regardless of their prices for two years. I think the slight increase of the fees now is justified. I’m sorry that they complained to other institutions instead of negotiating with the post office”, said Turcan. The government authorities are yet to comment on the API statements.