January the 14th, 2023 - The price increases we've witnessed up and down the country ever since the euro was introduced on the first day of this year have been rather astonishing. While most people expected prices to go up a little bit, what has been happening is ''pure profiteering'' as Plenkovic himself described it. The government has stepped in with some measures, and it seems Croatian stores are being put well and truly under the radar of the authorities.
Economy Minister Davor Filipovic has been very vocal about the measures set to prevent Croatian stories from taking advantage of not only inflation but of the introduction of the new currency, and it appears that the idea of Croatian stores having to send their price lists to the government every two weeks for the foreseeable future is now on the table.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, the deadline given by the government to all those who raised their prices unjustifiably to return them to what they were back before Croatia entered the Eurozone (December 2022), or sanctions would be imposed expired just a couple of days ago. Economy Minister Davor Filipovic repeated in an interview with Media Servis that either freezing the prices of a wider number of products or cancelling subsidies entirely is currently being considered in an attempt to combat this situation.
When asked why he was going off an the initial idea of having blacklists on which Croatian stores and service providers who had unjustifiably raised their prices would be placed, he replied that his ministry had sent a letter to the ten largest retail chains with the request that they provide the government with their respective price lists for about 80 products for the whole of last year.
"We've asked that they continue to deliver their price lists to us every two weeks, which we will put on the Internet and enable everyone to watch the price movements in the largest retail chains in one place. I'm not going to say that it is a black list, but if people can see it all and make a comparison in one place, it can be observed in that context,'' said Filipovic of the move.
"The State Inspectorate established that there was an increase in prices of food products from 6 to 20 percent, and that includes bakery products as well,'' he added.
You can read more about the scrutiny Croatian stores and other service providers have been placed under from the powers that be, which includes all authorities from the Tax Office to Customs and the State Inspectorate in our most recently published Week in Croatian Politics article, which discusses the topic at length.
