YEREVAN, MAY 17, NOYAN TAPAN. The RA State Commission on Protection of Economic Competition has not received any calls about abuse of a competitive position, the Commission's chairman Ashot Shahnazarian said during a talk with reporters on May 16. According to him, daily monitoring of prices has been done in 30 commodity groups since December, which showed that there has been a growth in prices of some commodities but this growth makes only 1-2%. Out of these commodities, the prices of rice and pork only grew by 30%. In response to the question about the cause of inflation in all commodity groups, the commission chairman replied that as a result of an international economic crisis, a growth in prices of goods of social importance has been observed in all countries. The task of the commission is to keep an eye so that the inflation rate in Armenia will not exceed that in international market. In particular, there was excessive inflation in butter and vegetable oil markets in December 2006 but the situation improved after 40 economic entities had been fined. A. Shahnazarian said that some changes were made thanks to the economic policy adopted by the new government. Particularly, as a result of improvement of customs administration, there has been a decline in customs values, and now the commission is going to find out why, in particular, prices of butter and vegetable oil have not declined under conditions of a fall in the customs values of these foodstuffs. Responding to the question about whether he considers as sufficient the amounts of fines imposed on the companies to have made violations, A. Shahnazarian said that the use of large fines may have a negative impact on business. He expressed a hope that the parliament will soon approve the legislative initiative passed by the Republican Party of Armenia in first reading. The legislative initiative envisages that the whole profit made as a result of a baseless increase of a price under conditions of unfair competition and an anticompetition agreement shall be transferred to the state budget.

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