Prime minister blames government on food price surge

MOSCOW, Dec 10 (PRIME) -- Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin blamed the Federal Antimonopoly Service, the Economic Development Ministry, the Industry and Trade and Agriculture ministries and his deputies on Thursday for the consumer price growth.

"If the president points to a situation, this means that work of all the government and its heads that I have mentioned leads to failures, which need to be eliminated," Mishustin said.

On Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin criticized the government for sugar, sunflower seed oil, bread and flour price surge. He said this was an attempt to set the prices on the Russian market at a global level.

"Dear colleagues, let me remind you that we saw the situation already in autumn, paid attention to it,” Mishustin said.

“But many of us explained the growth by seasonal factors and did not take into account higher exports of these products, the global price dynamics in these products, the foreign currency rate rise, the reduction of output of some items. But the season has changed, and the situation did not improve."

The prime minister scheduled a meeting on the issue for 5:00 p.m., Moscow time and ordered the government to prepare reports with measures to soften the situation.

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