Within the day, the price of coffee or oil increases: Minister Appeals to Competition Authority

Industry, Intervention and Trade Minister Rozeta Hajdari has said adopting the Foreign Trade Bill will help establish reciprocity against Serbia. But this time, she added that she will be careful and that such a decision will be well analyzed for preparation of logistics.

Hajdari in debate “Open” on Tuesday, said they have launched analysis for safeguard clauses from import from Serbia.

This law will be of great help in implementing reciprocity and I feel good that this law was adopted by the Government and is the second reading in the Assembly soon. Then we have the Law for protective measures from the import we're working on. We see that we have a lot of imports, especially from Serbia, if it's a 40 per cent market price, we will take measures. So, based on legal provisions we've started with condiuric analysis and there are 11 other products that we're not going to punish the company, but the entire export from Serbia will have the fee that is set according to the quota we're going to calculate. This has been a long term for years and is not a one-page reciprocity document, but a decision for many years to protect our” market, she said.

In a series of Fol Movement debates, Minister Hajdari pointed out the reason for the rising prices of basic products and the actions they will take.

“These price hikes are due to the rise in inflation from the global COVID-19 crisis. As you know, 90 percent of goods in Kosovo are imports and mainly are household consumption. These are the situations that we have as importative places, we can't control prices when we're importers of 90 percent of the goods. But what we can do is help our country's competitiveness that's the authority of competition not allowing different cartels to be created for an increase of coffee. Within the day, coffee grows in all cities or oil increases. So, let's stop these internal agreements between economic operators”, Hajdari said.

She also expressed concern over the lack of qualified workforce.

Our local industry is challenged with a lack of qualified workforce, especially in the fields of engineering, agrindrine, electroigner, mechanical engineer and also level 3 and four of engineering, this sector is less advanced in Kosovo than other sectors that are social. We are in co-ordination with the Ministry of Education, as well as by Prime Minister Albin Kurti to have as many profiles as possible according to market needs”, she added.

Among other things, Minister Hajdari said that during Kurti Government the climate has improved and done business.