vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #611 / Special reports / Reading article...

Russia’s Grain Insurance Fund will sell 12,000 tons of grain to the country’s Far Eastern region of Primorye in order to stabilize the skyrocketing prices for bread, with some varieties last week seeing increases of 25 percent, the Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev said Wednesday.

On March 14, the cost of the most popular type, ‘Podolsky’, jumped abruptly by a quarter and reached 27 rubles ($1.04), making Primorye the region with the highest prices for bread in Russia.

The management of Vladivostok’s largest bread manufacturer Vladkhleb, which is often referred to as the city’s bread producing monopoly, says the price increase is a forced measure caused by growing costs for fuel, transportation and wheat. According to them, since fall 2007 the prices for fuel have gone up by 25-30 percent while the prices for wheat and flour have increased by 20 percent.

The grain sold to Primorye will be priced at 25 percent lower than market cost, Gordeyev said at the meeting of the State Commission for Social and Economic Development of the Far East and Zabaikalye regions in Moscow.

“The supplies will be provided by the Altai and Novosibirsk regions”, news reports cited Gordeyev as saying.

Meanwhile, it was stressed at the deputy meeting in Vladivostok on Wednesday that the prices for bread will not go down. The discussion was devoted to the issue of bread price increases and was attended by deputies and officials as well as Vladkhleb top managers.

“We have increased the price by four rubles, the remaining charge has been added by sellers,” The Vladivostok quoted Vladkhleb General Director Valery Sinyukhin as saying.

Daily, Vladkhleb’s bakery produces up to 50,000 loaves of Podolsky bread, which is only one of many types of bread made by the company. Overall, Vladkhleb’s produce supplies up to 80 percent of the daily demand of bread for the city’s residents.

On Wednesday, Primorye’s Prosecutor’s Office ordered the region’s Department of Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service to inspect the validity and legality for the prices increase, a statement from the office reported Wednesday.

The information from the inspection by the Department will be passed to the Prosecutor’s Office, the statement said.