On January 18, newly appointed Chairman of the Government of Kazakhstan Alikhan Smailov held a meeting to consider the urgent tasks of curbing inflation and a spontaneous rise in food and fuel prices, the press office of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Kazakhstan reported.
Alikhan Smailov particularly emphasised that the reported decline in the inflation rate from 8.9 to 8.4% did not produce the desired effect and citizens could not afford to buy more on their salary. As a result, consumers lose purchasing power, which eventually paralyzes the state economic and social policy, the Prime Minister said.
With the aim to solve this problem, the Prime Minister instructed to expand food production, saturate the domestic market and revise the fuel pricing mechanism and tariffs for services. Smailov tasked the Agency for the Protection and Development of Competition to enhance the antimonopoly practice and investigations in intermediary schemes, noting that dishonest sellers should not be allowed to profit on unjustified and high trade margins.
The Prime Minister instructed the akimats of the regions to control trade margins and final prices as scrupulously as possible. The Ministry of Finance and Commerce was tasked to develop a pilot project for the mandatory issuance of electronic data from the stage of import or production to the retail sale of regulated goods so that trade margin analysis would conducted at each stage of the resale.
