DPR authorities blamed price increases on weather conditions
The rise in food prices in the DPR, which began after the death of Alexander Zakharchenko, has continued recently, in particular due to difficult weather conditions. This was stated by the head of the industrial development strategy department of the administration of the head of the DPR, Yevgeny Lavrenov, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Unfortunately, this year our winter is quite snowy. We are more or less used to this, but problems remain. Naturally, this immediately affected the cost of delivery, since trucks were idle on the M-4 Don highway due to snow drifts, and because of this, diesel fuel was wasted, the cost of which increased significantly. I spoke with entrepreneurs, the increase in transportation costs was 40-50 percent. Naturally, this could not but affect prices. Plus, as far as I remember, fuel prices have risen a little in Russia, and this also had some effect,” he explained.
According to Lavrenov, the DPR made a decision to lower or completely abolish protective duties on some goods, which should reduce food prices.
“We are now counting on removing protective duties. By the way, I’ll tell you a little secret: if you read this document carefully, then we set a zero for grain. Moreover, we even lowered the import duty on confectionery products and soft drinks: it was 15 percent, now it is 8 percent.
Therefore, naturally, the rise in logistics prices could not but affect the rise in prices. But we hope that now the post-New Year rush has subsided; we see a slight decrease in wholesale prices for chicken in the Russian Federation.
The only thing that lets the grain down a little is the world price. Although we must pay tribute to the fact that with the closure of navigation in the Azov Sea, the port of Taganrog and the port of Azov, and there the ice harvest, the price of grain has dropped a little, so perhaps we will also get some positive effects here, but I don’t see it yet. We expect that now prices will drop a little, but this is a market trend, we cannot do anything about it,” the official added.
Lavrenov also commented on fuel prices.
“We are holding back the rise in fuel prices due to the fact that we still live on fuel purchased in December, still at the old prices. You know, our company buys everything on the stock exchange, makes an advance payment, then it comes to us. Therefore, we have the old purchase, the old price, and we limit the rise in fuel prices.
Denis Vladimirovich also instructed the Ministry of Revenue and Duties to calculate what the loss will be if we need to reduce the import duty to zero to support our producers. We are now preparing this material, we will report to Denis Vladimirovich about the results in the coming days, and, probably, the government will make some decision if we see that the growth will be significant.
But we need to understand that we depend on external factors, we are tied to the world price, and we will think about how to absorb the price increase for residents.
...We have been given the task of considering the issue so that we are equal in price to the Russian Federation. I think we will succeed,” the official concluded.
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