The authorities are considering the confiscation of the revenues made by the gas stations following the sale with artificially increased prices and the application of sanctions between 2,000 and 100,000 lei, announced on Thursday, the president of the National Authority for Consumer Protection, Horia Constantinescu.
“We take into account the sanction for an incorrect commercial practice and the issuance of a decision for each of them (petrol owners, no.). We analyze whether some of the traders increased the prices just because the others did it. In my profane opinion, we could talk about a cartel-type initiative or structure, because there is no justification if the neighbor increased the price to do it yourself in an attempt to obtain an additional profit. If this is confirmed, we take into account, together with colleagues from ANAF, the confiscation of revenues from the sale of artificially increased prices and their sending to the state budget. I think that this complementary sanction is harsher than that of applying a sanction of between 2,000 and 100,000 lei, which we will certainly apply, if we find any deviations, to absolutely all the controlled points,” stated Constantinescu, at the end of a control performed at one of the targeted gas stations.
The ANPC president is of the opinion that the people who bought large quantities of fuel encouraged ”such a questionable attitude”, by which the gas stations artificially increased the prices.
“From what I understand, from the discussions with the representatives of these economic operators, there is a story about the increase in prices in Hungary that they considered necessary to prevent. …At this moment, we requested the way of transmitting from their central structure to each of the working points the motivation for the immediate price increase. In our opinion, as long as we are talking about stocks purchased at a time when no increase is justified, we do not understand why this was done. I can’t tell you right now by how much each gas station has increased it. We will take a clear explanatory note in which each of the leaders of these work points should assume,” said Horia Constantinescu, according to Agerpres.
ANAF, ANPC and the Competition Council have launched investigations into the fuel market to verify the reason why the diesel and petrol tariffs increased in just a few hours during Wednesday, March 9th.
On Thursday morning, in Bucharest, the fuels were sold at prices between 7.43 and 9.59 lei in the Capital, after the gas stations were assaulted by drivers on Wednesday evening, scared that the price of fuels will exceed 10 lei per liter, as rumor circulated in the public space.
Pictures of drivers buying fuel in bags, tankers, containers and barrels have appeared on social networks.
The Minister of Energy had, on Wednesday evening, several posts on Facebook in which he urged the Romanians to calm down, saying that there are enough stocks and the prices have no reason to increase.
Also, the Competition Council considers that the anticipation of a certain price that should be practiced by a company and its announcement in the market may fall under the provisions of the Competition Law.
Companies need to set their own pricing policy independently, based on their own strategy, also says the Competition Council.