The Undersecretary of Actions for the Defense of Consumers, Liliana Schwindt, affirmed this Tuesday that his management will focus on deepening the controls for compliance with the Care Prices program.
“Our goal is for Precios Care not only to have a specific reference for consumer prices, but also to promote controls so that it works throughout the interior of the country, in coordination with the provinces and municipalities,” Schwindt told Télam Radio.
In the specific case of the province of Buenos Aires, which is made up of 135 municipalities, the Buenos Aires Ombudsman will be responsible for auditing the controls, in the event that a locality reluctant to carry them out is detected, the official warned.
Schwindt remarked that another objective of his management will focus on “definitively implement the Gondolas Law and restart the Price Observatory”.
The National Price Observatory was created in 2014, during the administration of former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, with the premise of monitoring, surveying and systematizing the prices and availability of inputs, goods and services produced in the country.
Another issue addressed by the official who joined the Secretary of Domestic Trade, headed by Roberto Feletti, is the importance of consumers being able to report irregularities without major difficulties.
“We are going to deepen the work so that consumers and users have access to complaints, arbitration, a lot of training and prevention work also when contracting services, which is where one sometimes finds the most faults,” he explained.
In this regard, he stressed that it is vital that consumers “can defend themselves in cases of (commercial) abuses, which sometimes are many and we see that they are unprotected against large companies.”
After warning that the sanctions “will be very strong” against those who do not comply with the agreement, he recalled that “as consumers we have the right to have clear, visible information about the prices and promotions of products on the shelves and for now we are not seeing that That is done properly.”
He stressed that “the work objectives are that, first of all, Care Prices, which is a program by which there is a specific reference of consumer prices, has controls, can be found in the interior of the country”
“And for that we will be working together with Feletti as he has already been doing, in coordination with the provinces, with the municipalities and also in the case of the province of Buenos Aires with the Ombudsman of the Province of Buenos Aires (Guido Lorenzino ) that in the municipalities that do not want to collaborate, it is providing a very important service through its delegations for the control of Care Prices”, the official pointed out.
The In the middle of last month, the Ministry of Domestic Trade launched the +Care Prices program with 1,321 products, and aims in the short term to work on the prices of bread and the seven non-exportable grilled cuts of beef.
In the list agreed with some 150 companies, a wide range of essential products for purchases and daily consumption stand out, such as 45 varieties of milk (long life, children’s, flavoured, fluid and powdered), 22 presentations of herbs , 6 mold breads, 24 types and sizes of disposable diapers and 33 varieties of dry pasta packages, among other essential items.
Precious Care products are sold throughout the country, in the main retail and wholesale supermarket chains.
From the start of the program, progress remains to be made in the negotiations to ensure the implementation of the program in smaller businesses such as stores, self-service stores and Chinese supermarkets.
