Karabakh Open
Oct 11 2007

Soaring prices and pledges to raise salary

Recently prices of food have been reported to soar. We tried to find
out the reason from shops. The shop owners swear they are suffering
losses. Why if the mark-up has even increased since they are now
selling products bought at the previous price?

On the other hand, you cannot accuse the shops which do not produce
the products. If the price of wheat went up by 27 drams (1 kg of
wheat costs 112 drams), the prices of flour and consequently of bread
and other products automatically go up. Besides, however, our
entrepreneurs produce 500 gram loafs instead of 1 kg loafs.

Fodder has become expensive too, rising from 70 to 100 drams per kg.
It means the price of meat is going to grow, to say nothing about the
eve of holidays when this product becomes more expensive. Meat will
cause the prices of other animal products up, such as butter, eggs,
dairy products, pastry.

So what is the secret of the soaring prices? According to the
director of one of the companies said Armenia sets the prices, and
here nobody can do anything about it. Hence, there is no need to look
for economic and legal reasons, for monopolies set the prices. It
means our officials in ministries let speculators make money on
low-paid workers and pensioners. Considering that our basket of goods
takes the bulk of our salary, the rising prices of food are a useful
method of boosting profit. Or maybe the rise of prices was unleashed
by election pledges to raise salaries and `monopolists’ felt the
society can pay more and used the opportunity. Many people think the
rise of prices is connected with elections.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress