Nenad Bumbić, the founder of the “Consumer Protection” Association, said that the margins in Serbia, depending on the trade sector, are noticeably higher than in the West because the problem in Serbia is the lack of competition.
“Traders are here to make money and they will always try to make as much money as they can, we have no right to argue with them.” “The way we can fight against that is by creating the conditions for the greatest possible competition or with state measures,” Bumbić said.
He cited the example of the USA and the governments of many EU countries, which responded to price increases by reducing or abolishing taxes. “As far as gasoline is concerned, we have a situation where the state has essentially earned the most from the increase in fuel prices because excise taxes and tax burdens are actually what make up most of the fuel price,” says Bumbić.
The problem of lack of competition
When it comes to the white goods market, Bumbić states that the choice ultimately comes down to two companies.
“We have the problem of lack of competition, and on the other hand we have some objective circumstances that bother traders, namely that we are still not part of the EU and that there are customs duties and we cannot, like Hungarians or Romanians, purchase goods from a trader from Spain or via the Internet to it’s easier to order. The basic and first problem is insufficient competition, and then everything builds on that,” Bumbić said.
Margins for retail chains are not that big
“Through an in-depth analysis of the RZS, we saw that in the trade chains, the margins are not that big, and their profit rate is relatively low. Simply, this is such a time, a time of high inflation. We lived in a regime of high inflation for decades, until 2012 or 2013. And this inflation was not caused by the behavior of the NBS – it is a phenomenon for the whole of Europe, of course a little less in the West, a little more in the East. We follow Europe in these circumstances as well. We cannot, it is not realistic, to have low inflation in our region. We would like it to be like that, but it is not,” said the minister.
Just a few days before Momirović, the governor of the National Bank of Serbia, Jorgovanka Tabaković, said that the level of inflation is also influenced by the retail chains, which, as she stated, unjustifiably raised their margins. She accused the manufacturing industry and trade of using high inflation to make more money.
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