Although it may have seemed that something was going on with the series of boycotts of everything and anything in the retail sector, for now the matter remains just an impression. The truth is that the Government has expanded the list of products for which it has limited the price, and that it has sent the Act on Exceptional Price Control Measures into urgent parliamentary procedure, and that the State Inspectorate has already started combing retailers and bakeries, and that one retail chain has threatened suppliers that it will remove their products from the shelves if they do not lower their prices, but prices are still not falling. And in the entire supply chain, everyone is accusing each other of high prices - manufacturers, distributors, importers, and retail chains, both, including the representative offices of multinational companies in Croatia. And the government is the common culprit for all of them, because it raised salaries in the state sector, which the private sector had to follow suit, so now, they say, their input costs have increased. And the culprit of all culprits is VAT, and that is where, in the opinion of all stakeholders in the supply chain, any discussion about excessive prices in Croatia should end. And if by chance one begins to question the fact that despite the lowering of the VAT rate on certain products, the price of the same continues to rise, then the mutual accusations of traders and distributors will start again and the debate will never end. And if margins are mentioned, Pandora's box opens. And while the whole debate about retail prices continues, we will never get an answer to the question why Croatian products are cheaper abroad, for example.
It seems we will never get a clear official answer to this question, although consumers know that it is greed, but we have heard all kinds of justifications, such as that Croatia is a "logistically demanding country" due to the shape of the territory, which makes the transport of goods more expensive, even though 80 percent of the population in Croatia lives along highways, and the price of fuel is among the lowest in the region, while almost all large retail chains have their own distribution centers. One of the justifications is that the Croatian market is small and that Croatians have lower salaries than, for example, Austrians, which means that our prices must be high in order for distributors to achieve turnover and profits like in Austria!?
So we have received all possible explanations and justifications about why we have such high prices, but we have not yet seen a concrete move to lower prices or at least stop their growth. The finger is also pointed at foreign retail chains that are inflating their costs just to avoid paying corporate income tax, although some have started to report it because they can no longer hide their profits with expenses. They, in turn, justify themselves by saying that the Croatian market is small, which is why they sell fewer products than in large countries, which makes products more expensive. Interestingly, this rule does not apply to the Slovenian market, which has half the number of consumers as the Croatian one. However, the Slovenians have "brought" so-called "price cutters" to their retailers, i.e. retail chains that are known to have lower prices than others, such as Lidl and Aldi, which are unknown to us in Croatia, which are pushing prices down. Lidl has not played that honorable role in our market. Moreover, it has joined forces with other foreign chains in inflating prices to the maximum, avoiding paying taxes, and taking profits out of the country. In most cases, these are legal tax optimization methods, but they often border on legality.
If we ask foreign retail chains about the reason for the high prices in our country, they will tell us that it is because in, for example, Germany, they order large quantities of goods and receive a discount, while Croatian retail chains do not buy such large quantities and therefore do not have such negotiating power. Again, we must mention the Slovenians because this “rule” does not apply to them either. But that is why everything works in Croatia, and above all the fact that they make fools of us. Like the fact that multinational companies set prices by region, adjusting them to the average purchasing power. By that logic, we should have prices among the lowest in the EU. And again, we must cite the example of Slovenia with far higher wages and lower prices.
So this entire futile debate about high prices in Croatia was initiated with only one goal - to never get an answer to the question of why our prices are skyrocketing.
Bonus video:
