YEREVAN, MARCH 6, NOYAN TAPAN. At the March 6 sitting, the RA State Commission for Protection of Economic Competition decided to initiate proceedings in 4 markets on suspicion of groundlessly raising prices, creating artificial deficits and reaching anticompetition agreements by economic entities. Proceedings were initiated in the markets of vegetable oil, butter, medicines and domestic appliances. The Commission's Chairman Ashot Shahnazarian said at a briefing following the sitting that alarm calls about high fluctiations of prices had been received from Yerevan and various marzes. According to him, in particular, inflation tendencies were quite high in the medicine market, which is not substantiated by any economic factors. In his words, it became known that the importers of medicines had agreed to raise the prices of all kinds of medicines by 25%. He assured those present that from March 7 - after the stabilization of dram-dollar ratio, prices will fall in all shops. In particular, the price of gasoline will fall by 10 drams, while the wholesale supply price of granulated sugar will fall to 250 drams. A. Shahnazarian said that the situation is still somewhat worrying in the marzes (provinces) where the level of prices is a bit higher than in the capital city. He announced that the Commission cooperates with the State Revenue Committee to deal with this problem: the list of shops with inappropriately high prices is given to the State Revenue Committee that will check the filfilment of tax liabilities by these shops. As regards the growth in prices of domestic products, the Commission's chairman explained that it is conditioned by imported raw materials. "The problem is by how much their prices have grown. Today we control mechanical aspirations of economic entities in terms of abusing a dominating position and reaching an anticompetition agreement," he said.

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