Competition Authority is monitoring 20 articles on rising prices for special procedure oil

The Republic of Kosovo's Competition Authority is monitoring 20 food articles for price hikes. This has been confirmed for Online Economy, the chief general's task officer, at this Seladin Beqa institution.

He has clarified that these articles are from the basic consumer basket, which will monitor prices for how they changed.

Beqa has mentioned the rise, as he has said, of the uncontrollable rapid of prices last year, a period for which he said they have evidence and are especially monitoring the price of oil.

He claims that in this case there has been an agreement between processors, distributors and retail vendors, and there is even suspicion that there have been restrictions on sales.

For this matter, the Authority will draw up in a special report on how high oil prices came up at the time.

“The authenticity of competition currently has some investigative procedures under investigation, as in telecommunications, two investigative procedures one has opened earlier, and now there is another procedure, meaning two are from the energy sector and one from the mineral sector. Other sectors we have under surveillance are basic baskets, or consumer baskets, which are 20 products that we have under monitoring and we'll soon come up with a conclusion to the issue in question, the oil mean”.

The market disorder in March 2022 that had an unintelligible rapid increase in some supermarkets, hypermarkets and we're looking at what happened at that time. In that period in the post without the Competition Commission and the procedure cannot process the question to consider what happened, but we have had the evidence and will soon come up with a conclusion to the matter of oil”.

Beqa also said that in the investigation procedure 2 cases in the telecommunications sector, one in energy and one in the mining sector, EO reports.

For this case and others Beqa said they have co-operation with the Prosecution and the Department of Economic Crimes in the Police.

For this case, we have co-operation with the inspectors of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, and we have contacted the Department of Economic Crimes, and the Prosecution has been interested, and it is an open case. Because it says that there is an agreement between processors, distributors, and retail vendors, there are elements that even limit sales, which made the matter even more complicated then. We will cooperate with the ATK Prosecutor, Police and Inspectors and come with a conclusion to the case in question”.

“Based on legal procedures, there are two moments of procedure, preliminary review of the investigation up to six months, then we decide on the conclusion of closure of the procedure or opening, meaning launching investigations. The commission was mandated at the assembly in June 2022 so far we have received 17 acts, investigative procedures, allowing some concentrations. There are conclusion to the conclusion of the procedure, the conclusion to opening the procedure, there are 2 of the telecommunications sector, one in energy and one in the mining sector. We are waiting on the basket for 20 articles to see if we can open a procedure and see what has happened to the rising prices in the market. Under that we will take legal procedure”.