The Competition Council will launch this week the auction for the development of the “Price Monitor”, which will also contain data on the car fuels. The online platform will display prices for all types of petrol (gasoline and diesel) from OMV, OMV Petrom, Rompetrol, Mol, Lukoil, Socar and Gazprom distribution networks across the country.

In a statement quoted by Agerpres, Bogdan Chiriţoiu, president of the competition authority, estimates that “developing this price monitoring system will lead to transparency in the consumer market”. The Monitor should allow users to find out the prices of food and car fuels, as published by the major retailers, so that the best price-quality ratio to be easily discovered.

The Memorandum on the establishment of a monitoring and comparing system for fuel prices was approved by Government in October 2017. The estimated value of the contract is 1.7 million lei, as stipulated in the approved budget of the Competition Council for 2018.

In November 2016, the Competition Council launched a pilot project accessible for Bucharest and Ilfov to monitor 128 food prices from 64 generic product categories, for each of the latter, two individual product prices: the cheapest and the best-selling. Retailers participating in the pilot phase were Mega Image, Lidl, Kaufland, Selgros, Carrefour, Penny, Profi.

The initiative was well received by the public; on the first day, the application was blocked after sudden 1.9 million visits, and 360.000 views were recorded on the second day.