The Chairman of the State Commission for the Protection of Economic Competition of Armenia (SCPEC) at his first press conference in this position January 21 said that the body curtailed price gouging over the New Year holiday.

Speaking about the traditional rise in prices before the New Year, David Harutyunyan said the rise in price of sugar (by 37 percent) and of imported butter (by 58 percent) has been due to trade on the international market where the commodities increased by 90 and 58 percent respectively.

The newly appointed chairman said this year the commission will expand its work to provinces, and that in 2009 the SCPEC drafted a new package of legislative amendments, which is already at the Armenian Government.

“We also want to invest a new institute, an institute of awareness, which will give an opportunity to warn economic entities to avoid legal violations,” Harutyunyan says.

Many experts believe that the work done by the commission is meaningless, because in case a baseless rise in prices in any market is registered, by the time the commission manages to hold a monitoring and to file a lawsuit and to fine the economic entities, the latter manage to get super-profits at the expense of consumers, and the fines do not cost more than the profits.

Speaking about the productivity of the commission, Harutyunyan said that almost all countries all over the world face similar problems.

“Only in the US, where the competition body is running for more than 100 years, an institute of consumers’ compensation has recently been founded,” Harutyunyan says.