14:05, 9 April, 2020

YEREVAN, APRIL 9, ARMENPRESS. The State Commission for the Protection of the Economic Competition is carrying out daily monitoring of the developments taking place in the commodity markets during the coronavirus crisis, chairman of the watchdog agency Gegham Gevorgyan said at the Cabinet meeting.

He said they see a certain trend of price decrease.

“The price increase is somewhere between 1 and 4 percent and no abrupt increase has taken place. We’ve made a comparison against the same period of 2018 and for example sugar price in February 2020 was 230 drams, and 250 drams as of April 8, whereas in 2018’s same period it was 338 drams,” he said.

He said the prices and the figures show that a competition exists in the market.

Gevorgyan said regular type petroleum costs 310 drams per liter, whereas the price in 2018 was 450 drams.

PM Nikol Pashinyan added that deflations happened in 2019 and 2020 in numerous directions and this circumstance must be taken into account.

“If we were to attempt to make artificial intervention against prices, we will have deficit in the market, businessmen will simply stop importing goods. There are two lines here, first is for there not to be an artificial intervention and second is that no occurrences of situational over-profit happen,” he said, adding that Armenia is among the very few countries which doesn’t have shortages of any goods in the store shelves during the coronavirus crisis.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan