Prime Minister Alikhan Smailov instructs to intensify work to prevent inflation growth

At the government session chaired by the Prime Minister of the Republic of Kazakhstan Alikhan Smailov, measures to prevent inflation, increase in prices for food and oil products were considered.

The Prime Minister noted that the Head of State Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, in his speech at the Majilis of the Parliament, paid special attention to inflation issues and set the task of stabilizing prices.

“The inflation rate dropped from 8.9% in September to 8.4% in December last year. But it's still a high level. People can buy less with their wages as purchasing power is reduced. This generally reduces the effectiveness of the economic and social policy of the state. Therefore, special attention is paid to inflation, price stability,” Smailov said.

The Head of Government stressed the need to take deeper and more systematic measures that would increase the volume of food production, the saturation of the domestic market with goods, review the pricing mechanism for key energy carriers and tariffs for paid services.

The Agency for the Protection and Development of Competition was instructed to strengthen the work on antitrust response measures and investigation of intermediary schemes.

“We must not allow unscrupulous sellers and intermediaries to profit from unjustified and high mark-ups,” Smailov said.

Regional akimats were instructed to intensify work on control over trade markups and marginal prices, the Ministry of Finance, together with the Ministry of Trade and Integration, to work out the issues of conducting a pilot project on the mandatory issuance of electronic invoices from the stage of import or production to the retail sale of specific goods, which will allow the production of markup monitoring at each resale level.

To ensure the saturation of the domestic market with food, the Ministry of Agriculture was instructed to calculate the volume of production and consumption of agricultural products and, if necessary, introduce export restrictions.

The Ministry of Energy is to prepare legislative amendments to reform the structure of production and sale of petroleum products within a month.

“It is necessary to shorten the supply chain and analyze the pricing practices for petroleum products. Extra links should be cut off,” stressed Smailov.

The Head of Government instructed the Agency for the Protection and Development of Competition, together with the Ministry of Industry and Infrastructure Development, to take the measures provided for by law to maintain coal prices at the level of 2021.

The Ministry of Industry and Infrastructure Development was instructed to monitor and analyze underloaded and idle capacities of the food industry and implement measures for their further reloading.

The Ministry of National Economy together with government agencies until Feb. 1, 2022, must submit to the Government a set of measures to control and reduce inflation.

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