What State Officials Are Thinking About

The creation of regulations is one of the ways in which the state administration justifies its size. When there is a lull in a certain sector of a ministry, when a new minister begins to casually and flippantly count the people and wonder what they are all actually doing there, you can bet that someone will remember that it is time to create some new regulation.

A working group has been formed at the Ministry of Economy to prepare a new Regulation on the manner of displaying retail prices and unit prices of products and services provided to consumers. Given such a long name, it is almost certain that its content will be extensive enough to justify the existence of at least a dozen officials. And to complicate life for those who will have to implement it. By force of law and under the threat of high fines.

Thus, this Regulation will prescribe and regulate the manner of displaying prices for retail prices and unit prices of products. It is evident that the current trading practice, which arose based on some previous regulation, is considered by state officials to be insufficiently regulated and quite disorderly. If anyone objects that the new Regulation is unnecessary, officials can always nicely refer to the regulations of the European Union, although it is hard to notice that the manner of displaying retail prices in Croatia is not the same or very similar to how it is done in EU countries.

In any case, officials have noticed that things with price displays are not quite as they should be, so they will prescribe a list of products for which, due to their nature, it is not possible to display the price on the product itself. They mention deep-frozen products, small products, and similar items as examples. How small? Well, they will nicely prescribe that, and let the traders measure which ones need a price label and which do not, as they have no other work to do anyway. Officials will also prescribe a list of products for which traders must display both the retail price and the unit price of the product. This list will include products for washing, cleaning, and body and hair care, detergents, and similar items. As a consumer, I will certainly benefit from knowing how much a liter of shampoo costs if the price of a 200 ml bottle is this much.

In general, it has been concluded that it is not good that prices in stores are displayed above or below the products and that this needs to change. However, officials were previously warned by traders why this should not be changed. Traders pointed out that labeling each individual product with price tags would incur enormous new costs, that it is problematic to label deep-frozen products, that it cannot be done for a whole bunch of small products, and similar issues.

As we can see, officials have accepted some of the traders’ suggestions, those related to the technique of labeling. The one related to enormous new costs was not adopted. Let the gentlemen traders organize their business as they know and can, and if they do not have enough workers for that, let them hire new ones. The labor market is full. So, state officials will not think about what it means for traders to have the obligation to label prices on each individual product? And how many people must work on that in supermarkets? And how much will it cost the store and to whom will it have to pass on that new cost.