Liberal Movement’s leader is sceptical about Govt’s intentions to monitor food prices

Leader of the Liberal Movement Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen is sceptical about the new Government’s intentions to devise new ways to monitor food prices and prevent their unjustified hikes. She believes that this way the new ruling coalition is trying to show to voters that it is fulfilling its election promises to lower food prices.

The Government instructed the Ministry of Agriculture to form the Food Council by the end of January that would monitor food prices. In parliament, politicians from the ruling coalition have also registered a bill on reduced rate value added tax (VAT) for staple foods.

"I realise that the Social Democrats, who had included a promise to tackle prices in their programme and spoke about this a lot during the election campaign, must demonstrate some actions in this direction. […] Creation of the council is an attempt to show that they are doing something to rein in prices," the former parliament speaker said in an interview to the radio station Žinių radijas on Friday.

"It seems to me that price monitoring has been ongoing rather actively and effectively already. Indeed, there are tools, established mechanisms to monitor prices and there is sufficient data," said Čmilytė-Nielsen.

She is therefore sceptical whether the new council is going to be effective and not just be a bureaucratic institution.