YEREVAN, JANUARY 23, ARMENPRESS. The state commission for the protection of economic competition is inspecting on a daily basis the price policies of dominant businesses in different product markets, head of the governmental watchdog Artak Shaboyan said during parliamentary hearings.

According to him, there are no monopolies in the product markets under their viewpoint, because, according to the legislation a monopoly is considered to be a business which has 100% of the market under its control.

“There are  natural monopolies which are regulated by the government – gas, electric energy market. There are no monopolies in other sectors, there are major companies which we call companies who have a dominant position. We supervise their price policy on a daily basis, we receive information from the businesses and the SRC on prices of acquisition and sale”, he said.

According to him, is they see deviations they enhance studies – forcing to comply the prices with the existing situation.

In terms of the price policy in gas stations and petrol stations and discoveries of price increases, Shaboyan says that according to their studies the price differences between gas stations are more than in petrol stations, which, according to him, is related to the more competitive nature of gas (natural) stations.

From January 1, the prices of petrol, diesel fuel and natural pressurized gas increased by 20, 60 and 20 drams respectively. The governmental watchdog says the increases are associated with the changes of tax tariffs under the new Tax Code.