Holiday prices, are traders abusing?

Increasing prices for the end of the year holidays is already a tradition. Families significantly increase the expenses for the holiday table and this leads to an increase in the price of products, mainly food. Meanwhile, there is no shortage of abuses by traders, as an integral part of daily shopping.

The increase in prices is also stimulated by the large flow of immigrants returning to their homeland to spend the end of the year holidays with their relatives. There are thousands of returnees this year as well, which undoubtedly have their impact on the increase in demand for goods and products, exerting pressure on the increase in prices.

But are price abuses being detected this year, mainly in the fruit and vegetable markets or even food stores?

The Competition Authority has announced that it has started field monitoring regarding the prices of basket products, on the eve of the end-of-year holidays. This institution announces that it will monitor commercial entities, as it aims to prevent price abuse. While penalties are warned against businesses that will abuse: "The Competition Authority assures citizens that it will identify and punish any possible phenomenon of artificial price increase that may be caused by unfair competition practices."

Even in the past years, in this period of the year, such actions were undertaken, not only by the Competition Authority, but also by the tax administration, but the abuses were not stopped.

In order to cope with the increase in prices, but also to help pensioners with the end-of-year holidays, the government allocated a bonus for them, worth 10,000 to 15,000 ALL depending on the pension. The bonus is two to three times higher than the one given in previous years.

The granting of this bonus occurs at a time when the increase in pensions has become the debate of the day, with promises from both the government and the opposition, making it clear that pensioners will be one of the factors that will determine the next elections. parliamentary.

But pensioners will not be the only ones who will receive help this year-end.

A bonus of 15,000 lek will go to families with economic assistance, persons with disabilities and their guardians. In total, the fund for this category reaches 2.2 billion ALL. Meanwhile, an additional fund of 1.4 billion lek will be given to women, as well as 1.6 billion lek to support the municipalities for paying off arrears, as well as improving the provision of services to citizens.

Albanians are facing the increase in prices, not only during the festive period of the end of the year, but already for more than three years. Since 2022, the whole world has faced the increase in the price of basic consumer products, as a result of the war in Ukraine, what is commonly called the price crisis. In the last year, the situation has stabilized and inflation, the indicator that testifies to the cost of living in the country, has decreased to 2%, being within the predicted target.

But in Albania, due to the lack of domestic production and the high dependence on imports, the prices of food products are much higher than other items of consumption.

Consequently, price inflation has also been almost twice as high as general inflation throughout the entire period. In November, the increase in food prices reached 3.2%, or 1.2% more than inflation.

The increase in prices has burdened the budget of all Albanian families, which use most of their income for food.

The data show that about 40% of the total monthly income of a family goes precisely to food. In the poor strata, which includes pensioners and low-income families, the weight of food in the monthly budget is even higher and exceeds 50% of the total. While the regional average is 32% and the European average is 18%. The poorer a country is, the greater the weight that food occupies in the monthly budget.

The government has promised another bonus for pensioners, which will be given in the spring. For pensions up to 20,000 ALL, a 10,000 ALL bonus will be given, while for pensions over 20,000 ALL, the bonus will be 5,000 ALL.

Experts suggest increasing the disposable income of citizens as the only way to cope with rising prices. At the same time, they suggest the development of domestic production, mainly agricultural production, in order to reduce dependence on imports. A challenge that requires more work and more time than just raising wages, given that agriculture has already entered a downward cycle.

Even this end of the year, we will buy fruits and everything else more expensively. But this is not a problem that Albanians have only for holidays. It is the biggest concern of the vast majority of families and more than 700,000 pensioners, and this problem cannot be solved with a bonus. (A2 Televizion)