The House of Peoples of the Parliament of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina adopted amendments to the Law on Price Control. The goal is to mitigate the negative consequences of price increases, when the need arises, and an increase in fines for all violators is foreseen, for which, for example, the maximum possible will be 30,000 marks instead of the current 10,000.
The prices are not the same in any store, sometimes because of the location, and sometimes they go “wild”, especially during times of emergency. Citizens also complain that price increases are visible at every step.
The House of Peoples has approved the entry into force of higher fines for violators of the Law on Price Control, which will be implemented only in the case of emergency situations and exceptional market disturbances. In these circumstances, the legal entity will pay a minimum fine of 6,000 BAM instead of the current 1,000 BAM, and the maximum possible fine is 30,000 BAM. So far, small fines for traders have even been an incentive.
“Most traders and all other traffic participants very wisely weigh the amount of the penalty and the risk they have in order to achieve a certain benefit. Very often they consciously decide to break the law in order to make a profit, counting on a smaller number of inspectors, so that any fraud can be controlled. ..,” points out the president of the TK Consumers’ Association Gordana Bulić.
What does the field inspection do, who does it punish? Until the conclusion of the attachment, we have not received the data, and a detailed analysis of the penal policy on the issue of control was previously requested by the Committee for Economic and Financial Policy of the Federal Parliament, in which they believe that the penalties were introduced flat-rate and without any analysis.
“The main complaint is that attention was not paid to the essence, it is not the punishment and the amount of the penalty, it is the capacitation of inspections, indiscriminate work and what is most important – an inclusive approach so that traders avoid fraud and enable a fair and honest price according to market conditions” , says Admir Čavalić, president of the Committee for Economic and Financial Policy of the ZD PFBiH.
In associations for consumer protection, the “Price Locking” project, which produces results and includes 60 products, is much more significant.
“The range of savings, under the condition that all those products are bought, was between 35 and 40 BAM for the total number. So there were savings,” says Assistant Minister of Trade FBiH Merima Maslo.
Today, not even two average salaries can cover the trade union consumer basket, which amounts to almost three thousand marks. When asked how they live, citizens don’t even know. They give up everything and live practically only for essential needs, which is ultimately not good for any society, BHRT writes.
