“Statistics Lithuania says that primary factors that affected changing prices were return of prices after July’s discounts and seasonality. Thus, it is wrong to associate price growth of some goods or services only with the euro introduction,” the prime minister said in a statement.
According to the prime minister, the trend is confirmed by a statistical analysis conducted by the Government’s Economic Analysis Department.
Based on the data of Statistics Lithuania, prices of consumer goods and services in August fell by 0.1 percent. However, some prices grew – price of solid fuels per year increased by 15.3 percent, milk and dairy products by 4.9 percent, fruit by 5.6 percent. It should be noted that some prices increased before the euro adoption was approved, they could have been affected by global price growth of raw materials.
Nonetheless, according to the prime minister, greater price rises that cannot be explained away by trends in global or domestic markets may be a sign that some businesses are attempting to take advantage of the introduction of new currency – to sell more expensively and transfer currency exchange costs on consumers.
According to Butkevičius, a package of measures has been introduced to combat this trend: indication of prices in two currencies, supervision and possible fines. He added that consumers could force traders to act honestly by not buying goods that were made more expensive without any reason.
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