Prices in focus
By Andrei Munteanu
Chisinau (Moldova.ORG) – The proposal made by Mr. Prime-minister Vlad Filat to create a new National Agency on Price Monitoring has stirred up a whole series of debates, which is explainable. The population of the R.M. has experienced too many unhappy cases of abuse and lack of elementary logic in the economy, but these have been committed not only by the economic entities. Also, of course, these have not occurred mostly in the last year of governance.
What some people are tempted to criticize, I think deserves a “cool thinking” – as long as a government is elected in a genuine democratic way, any of its interventions, aimed at protecting the interests of a societal majority can be plausible. One cannot accuse creation of some structure designed to protect the interests of the citizenry. Nevertheless, a question that needs to be raised for sure is whether creation of a new structure guarantees its functionality and efficiency.
We in the R.M. have already some state-run structures that by means of their name and legal competencies, might tackle the issue of consumer protection including, with a view to unveil and fight the cases of unexcused and irrational occurrences of price raise. This has been being the National Agency for Consumer Protection. Thus, it is this that should be in charge for protection of consumer rights, not only in the cinema houses.
In order to respect the legislation on pricing, I don’t think there’s needed another agency, with a new budget, new staff, etc. It could have been sufficient to pay due attention to functionality of the already existent institution, which have already spent much of the public money, whereas the problem of citizens’ protection in terms of oddly excessive commercial surcharges, is still unsettled. It could have been consolidated the existent one, and anyway, it might have been cheaper for the state. But I think this is not the only problem.
In the stores of the R.M. labels with the translation of the consumers’ needed information in Romanian, on the packages of products, are done as if designed for mere scoffing the consumers. I know many people, of the average age and slightly over, who cannot read these inscriptions because the fonts are far too small, let alone the elder people.
Like in any other country and society, it does not matter if for any emerged problem new agency is created – what matters is the quality of the decisions made. Thus, I do not think the decision on setting up a new agency is of improper quality, but I believe it would have been better if the already existent institution had been kept accountable, which have had both longevity and legal competencies, based on existent legislation, that might have taken care of this problem including, but have not succeeded well enough, if ever at all.
Emergence of a new institution, without being timely accompanied by legal basis, which has not yet well designed status, can involve new tensions among it and the already existing ones, with regard to enforcement of some duties, or, what has been happening more often – an institution leaves some duties on the account of another, and eventually, none of them exercise their duties properly, the problems remaining unsettled and… money spent.
Comments