The Agriculture Ministry has published on its website a link with lists of selected kinds of food for which retail chains will guarantee the unchanged price for a period of three months.
The ministry's communication department further announced that retail chains showed a good will to mark the shelves where the food will be placed with the Anti-Inflation Guarantee logo, so that they would be easily recognisable to customers.
The list includes staples such as eggs, coffee, tea, butter, milk, rozky, flour, salt, oil, and assorted breads and pastas, a variety of meats and meat products as well as cheeses. It also includes wine, mayonnaise, beer, chrumky, chocolate bars, frozen pizza, and frozen French fries.
Food lists are available on this website.
Capping of food prices is a scam taking place with the government's consent, opposition Smer-SD representatives told a news conference on Tuesday. "It's impossible for representatives of retail chains to come up with the idea that they are going to cap the prices of some selected products without consulting it in advance with the manufacturers and suppliers concerned," said party leader Robert Fico. According to him, chains' capped food lists also include items that have nothing to do with basic food.
The extra-parliamentary Hlas-SD party has called on Agriculture Minister Samuel Vlcan to step down over the cartel agreement with retail chains on food prices.
According to Hlas-SD, the ministry with Monday's (March 20) statement confirmed that retail chains themselves agreed on the so-called price capping. However, prices of these foodstuffs grew only shortly before Friday's (March 17) press conference held by the Agriculture Ministry where the minister publicly lied when claiming it was about helping consumers.
"In a statement it issued on Monday, the Agriculture Ministry confirmed that it had given retail chains room for negotiations on the so-called anti-inflation agreement, which Minister Vlcan (an OLANO nominee) presented as his work on Friday. This is a serious violation of the competition law, as, according to the ministry's statements, merchants coordinated themselves on prices, which is explicitly forbidden among competitors by this law. The Anti-monopoly Office head is thus obliged to act ex officio and examine the actions by both merchants and minister Vlcan," said MP Robert Puci, a member of the Hlas-SD presidium.
Meanwhile, the Agriculture Ministry said that the Anti-inflation Guarantee initiative is "no way a cartel agreement". "There's need to stress that the lists of food kinds included in the Anti-Inflation Guarantee have been made by the retail chains themselves," stated the ministry's communication department in reaction to Hlas-SD's claims.
