Lebanese Republic 
Minister activities date 25-2-2020
Minister of Economy and Trade Raoul Nehme announced that the Ministry’s priorities consist in the consumer’ protection asserting that the Ministry will not tolerate with the offenders or whoever manipulates prices and monopolizes the goods. He also stressed that an agreement was reached today with the bakeries union to establish a mechanism for the bread’ cost indicator.
Minister Nehme made this announcement during a press conference held this afternoon at this office at the Ministry in the presence of the media.
First, Minister Nehme said: “I wanted to hold this press conference to tackle two issues, the first one is about the bread and the second one is related to the increase of the goods’ prices. As for the first issue, I met with a delegation of the bakeries union and we agreed to establish a mechanism for the bread’ price to ensure the consumer protection without incurring any loss on the bakeries that earn profit within the margin stipulated by the law while producing a high quality of bread. The agreement we reached is final for it will allows us to specify the items listed in the cost. The first meeting of the committee will be held next Monday to establish the mechanism and the decisions will be published next week in light of this study in order to save time.”
Minister Nehme also added: “As for the second matter consisting in the markets’ prices that are randomly witnessing a high increase, we suffer from prices increase, commodities fraud, uninstalled counters, expired commodities and others. This is what inspectors face from time to time and therefore, we urge the consumers to file complaints whenever they see a price violation or fraud, either by sending an complaint to the Ministry’ e-mail address or though mobile or by calling the hotline number 1739 or by sending it to the Ministry’s website or by visiting in person the Ministry”.
Minister Nehme continued: we have 100 inspectors for all Lebanon who perform daily inspection patrols, which is insufficient. In this regard, some of the Ministers asked during the first meeting of the Council of Ministers about the reason of the low number of inspectors in their regions. So by asking about the solution, the key consists in volunteering in order to help us:
- accelerateing the work and further intensifying the tasks.
- boosting transparency between the Ministry of Economy and the citizens.
- cooperating between the private and public sectors to reduce the economic crisis.
In addition, Minister Nehme urged the revolution activists to help the Ministry in to order to rescue our economy.
Moreover, Nehme emphasized that the volunteer shall visit the Ministry’ website or call the Ministry to register his name and adopt a specific mechanism in order to train them and explain to them the inspectors’ work as well as organize training sessions to better explain both the laws and the inspection mechanism, by accompanying the Ministry’ inspectors during their field inspections in order to intensify their tasks and increase the markets’ control in addition to help the Ministry achieving relevant researches and studies.
Minister Nehme also declared that the Ministry is exerting its endeavors so the profit margin shall not exceed 20 percent, otherwise the offenders shall be legally pursued. In addition, he stated that a new law will be approved in the Council of Minister and referred to the Parliament in order to issue it as soon as possible.
At the end, Minister Nehme concluded that the consumer protection is on top of our priorities and we will not spare any person who manipulates the prices and food quality. We will also confiscate the electricity generators and close the stores whose owners are violating laws.
