Economy Minister Kreshnik Bekteshi today announced an unusual decision to ban market chains from organizing promotional sales with discounts for the consumers.

According to Bekteshi, this is part of a planned move to increase prices of food and basic consumer items, arranged between the owners of the market chains, who would then give discounts to keep the consumers coming to their stores.

Our analysis shows that the increases in the prices we are seeing are unfounded. The prices at the world markets are going down, Bekteshi said.

He announced that the ban on discounts will be followed by another round of capping of prices in the stores.