The Competition Council has finalized the fuel market investigation and the conclusion is that in this segment the competition is low and there is a big player who sets the price, said Bogdan Chiriţoiu, president of the Competition Council, on Thursday.

„The investigation is completed and the document we will post on the site is to be written, which will happen in a few weeks. What we do now is to ensure confidentiality, to put out names and too accurate figures -eliminating trade secrets,” he said, according to Agerpres.

The report will include a radiography of the sector and a few recommendations.

„It’s not an investigation that applies sanctions, but through which we want to understand the functioning of the market, and it all revolves around the fact that we have a structure that is not prone to competition. We have a few big players but one of them has half the market, so there is a balanced market structure in which there are more players with relatively equal weights competing, but a very big player who sets the prices, and some smaller ones that follow it, and then the whole idea is how to better this structure of the market. We can’t make wonders, we will not be able to untie what was done at the time of privatization,” added Chiriţoiu.

According to him, companies are free to set any price they consider and it is the competition that does not let them set a high price, so as not to lose their customers.

„So, not the good will, not the love for consumers, stops the price increase but the fact that the market does not leave you. We are not in this situation in oil market because we do not have a competitive structure,” the Competition official said.

Asked if there are measures that can be taken to lower prices, he has shown that there are measures that can gradually increase competition.

„A more balanced market structure should lead to a price reduction, but there is nothing that will happen tomorrow,” said Chiriţoiu.