Sugar grows dearer, oil gets slightly cheaper

A decrease in the price of vegetal oil that climbed over 40% in the recent past is expected towards the end of next month, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Food Industry Dumitru Hodorogea said, quoted by Info-Prim Neo. In a Government meeting on Thursday, Dumitru Hodorogea said an agreement over the prices of dairy products was reached within the council on product. The processing companies raised prices in 2010 and can maintain them by spring, when they will start to collect large volumes of milk from villagers. Then the companies will be able to recover the losses sustained now. The situation regarding sugar is more worrisome. A kilogram of sugar in the regional market costs more than in Moldova. The sales of sugar this month have been larger than projected. There are cases when persons buy sacks of sugar from storehouses and take them to the relatives and friends in Ukraine, where it is by 40% dearer. Dumitru Hodorogea said the stored 45,000 tonnes of sugar should satisfy demand on the home market until the next sugar beet harvest. There are no reasons to raise the prices of bread and bakery products. The bakeries borrowed only 6,000 tonnes of food wheat of the 15,000 tonnes released from the state reserve. This shows that many of the 70 bakeries have enough flour, the deputy minister said. According to Dumitru Hodorogea, the Chisinau-based bakery SA Franzeluta is in a more difficult situation. It sustained losses of 17 million lei in 2010 after it made social bread, which is cheaper. Prime Minister Vlad Filat replied that the losses incurred when selling social bread are offset by the large profit made when selling other products. He ordered distributing the food wheat that remained in the state reserve to the bakeries that need it.