Uzbek authorities set to control unjustified prices for food
By Kamila Aliyeva
Uzbekistan is keen to struggle against unreasonable and artificial overstating of prices for socially important food products in the domestic market.
President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has signed a decree that entrusted the Department for Combating Tax, Currency Crimes and Legalization of Criminal Incomes with new powers, among which, in particular, the fight against overstating prices, podrobno.uz reported.
The Uzbek leader ordered the Prosecutor General's Office to identify and prevent illegal actions aimed at inflating the prices of vegetable oil and domestic flour, meat, sugar, husks and croutons, as well as creating a deficit and rush demand for them.
In addition, the Office will fight against abuse and corruption in the procurement, supply and sale of food products, cottonseed meal and husks at the expense of centralized resources. They will conduct systematic monitoring of pricing for these products in the market.
The document has another interesting innovation - the Prosecutor General's Office will identify corruption facts by the employees of the relevant supervisory bodies and market administrations that did not provide work to curb unreasonable and artificial overstatement of prices and did not take any actions with regard to persons illegally carrying out their activities on their territory.
To implement these powers, the Prosecutor's Office has the right to demand from legal entities, regardless of their form of ownership, and citizens, the necessary information and explanations, as well as to conduct operational search activities that are not a check of financial and economic activities.
In 2017, inflation in Uzbekistan is expected to be within 11-12 percent. The inflation forecast is increased under the influence of factors that were formed in the first half of the year, and to a lesser extent is related to the devaluation of the soum, according to the head of the Monetary Policy Department of the Central Bank.
The Central Bank of Uzbekistan devalued the national currency – soum – by almost two times on September 5, setting the official exchange rate of US dollar at 8,100 soums/USD compared to 4,210.35 soums/USD on Sept. 4.
The official statistical data reads that inflation in Uzbekistan amounted to 5.7 percent in 2016 against 5.6 percent in 2015. In 2017, inflation was planned to be kept in the range of 5.7-6.7 percent.
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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva
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