After more than a year of price gouging, authorities are trying to curb inflation with drip-drip freezes, but small price cuts will not mitigate the effect, as the government's measures are late and poorly implemented. The only comment of the citizens after each shopping trip is that "pure theft" takes place in the trade.

"We care about the citizens", "we will not leave them alone in the economic and energy crisis", are the slogans with which the Government pompously announced the freezes. Ministers and the Prime Minister even checked the shops to see if their decisions were being followed. Too late and too little for the poorest country in Europe. Most of the Macedonian citizens have to reduce their consumption. They lost the race with price increases, so they spend from their savings.

It took the authorities more than a year to measure and determine what constitutes a staple food item. The second bad move was that the freeze decisions were not accompanied by a strict order on quotas that producers must meet in order to avoid an imbalance in the domestic market. While the ministers were deliberating, the producers took advantage of the moment – ​​stockpiled stocks, hid the products, waiting for a shortage to occur in order to react with drastically higher prices (example – cooking oil). The last "empty from" happened with the bakeries, who went on strike for three days, leaving the shelves without basic white and semi-white bread, angry at the Government's decision. And everything could have been much more elegant, if both parties had shown the virtue of agreeing on how to carry it out more painlessly.

Almost every European government has done something to rein in traders who profited from speculative activities. The French signed an "anti-inflation agreement" with some of the retail chains and made a selection of basic products that will be sold at low prices. The Montenegrin authorities have agreed with six retail chains, in order to offer lower prices for 25 basic products. In Croatia, blacklists have been published, after the prices of oil, fresh milk, flour, sugar, minced meat were capped at the end of 2022... The Greek government ordered traders that they must have an "adequately affordable price" for at least one product in each category. And so on.

It is clear why producers object that freezing prices is not a market solution, and the burden of the crisis must not be borne by only one industry, but distributed on everyone's backs a little. The Vice President of the Economic Chamber of Macedonia, Zoran Jovanovski, also opened an issue that has been pushed under the carpet for years. He said loud and clear that "populism is born, and the business sector pays for it in the end." According to him, the state can intervene in times of crisis, but should provide financial assistance only to families who need it. The frozen price of bread is used both by those who have no money and by those who can pay five times more expensive bread. Why should bread be available to them at a subsidized price, asked Jovanovski?

With the five denars saved from the cheaper bread and the ten denars from the frozen price of milk and even more from the pasta, we can't even buy half a kilo of onions. So that our tears flow and without peeling it!