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• 17.02.2022, 12:47

The MART head has found the "guilty ones" in high inflation.

The Ministry of Anti-Monopoly Regulation and Trade held a board meeting on the results of the agency's work last year and the tasks for the next year. In 2021, the inflation rate has accelerated to 10% per annum. This is twice as much as the authorities' initial forecast.

The head of MART, Aliaksei Bahdanau, unexpectedly found the "guilty " in the high inflation rate.

"The main feature of last year was the so-called imported inflation. The record levels of inflation were recorded in the neighboring countries, our trade and economic partners. We are importing raw materials for our production, components, critical imported goods. Of course, this adds up to our domestic inflation, because the cost of production of our manufacturers, who use imported raw materials, is increasing. So this year we will have to work on reducing production costs," he said. "We will have to stuff more of our shelves with domestic products, which a priori will be cheaper than imported ones".

This year, the ministry will take targeted measures to "control" inflation:

developing sectoral cost-cutting programmes, taking effective measures and carrying out exhaustive work with enterprises to optimise costs, as well as curbing the rise in prices of raw materials and resources;

limiting the growth of regulated prices and tariffs for goods and services at levels no higher than the forecasted value of core inflation (6 percent) in conjunction with the growth of the population's incomes

exploring alternative ways of price regulation;

improving the procedures for establishing stabilization funds for fruit and vegetable products in order to increase the efficiency of their use;

developing methodological recommendations on organizing cooperation between MART and interested law enforcement bodies to detect and provide evidence of competition-limiting offences.