Today, on April 26, the Law of the Republic of Uzbekistan “On Protection of Consumer Rights” (April 26, 1996) was adopted, which is exactly 27 years old.
In this regard, at today’s briefing I present information about the main work carried out by the Competition Promotion and Consumer Protection Committee for the 1st quarter of this year in the field of consumer protection.
As you know, within the framework of the ongoing administrative reform in our country, the Antimonopoly Committee and the Consumer Rights Protection Agency under the Committee were reorganized into a single body with a special status – the Competition Promotion and Consumer Protection Committee.
At the same time, one of the priorities of the Committee’s activities is to protect the rights and interests of consumers, increase the legal and consumer culture of the population, and prevent the sale of low-quality goods on domestic markets.
In total, during the first quarter, the Committee received 5277 appeals from consumers.
36% of appeals are related to housing and communal services and transport services, 43% to trade and catering, 16% to communications, finance and social services, and 5% to advertising relations and other issues.
87% of these appeals (4590) were resolved positively and legal clarifications were given.
In the course of research on appeals, damage was revealed to 6,271 consumers in the amount of more than 3.0 billion soums.
Of these, recalculation to consumers for 2.1 billion soums (98.9%) has been achieved and measures are being taken to return the remaining funds to consumers.
At the same time, 39 research and analysis were carried out in various areas on the basis of systematic studies on consumer protection, information posted on social networks.
As a result of the studies and analyzes, it was found that 259,499 consumers were accrued surplus in the amount of 23 billion soums, and measures have been taken to return these funds to consumers.
In order to ensure the safety of goods (works, services) and control their quality, based on the approved schedule, control purchases of goods in retail trade and their examination are systematically carried out.
Accordingly, a control purchase of a total of 85 goods was carried out (together with the TV program “Quality Control”), according to the results of their examination, it was found that 13 goods do not meet the requirements of regulatory and technical documentation.
6 medicines (fake or not included in the state register) were found to be inconsistent with the current technical regulatory documentation and sent to the authorized bodies for taking action in the prescribed manner.
Using today’s briefing, I would like to ask the entities involved in the sale of medicines and medical devices in our republic to pay special attention to the following important issue.
As you know, it has been established that the wholesale and retail sale of medicines and medical products, regardless of the number of intermediaries involved in their supply, is carried out using restrictive trade margins set at no more than 15 percent of the purchased value for wholesale and no more 20 percent off the wholesale price for retail sale.
In accordance with the Decree of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan “On additional measures to provide the population with high-quality medicines and medical products” (No. PD-411 dated 10/26/2022) from May 1, 2023, when registering in a special mobile application of the tax authorities of the fiscal mark of the purchase receipt purchased by individuals, in case of overstatement of the margins to according to the established retail prices of medicines, a message about this is automatically sent to the Committee to collect a fine, according to article 164 of the Administrative Responsibility Code of the Republic of Uzbekistan.
For this reason, we ask them to comply with the limited trade margins established by the legislation regarding the trade in medicines and medical products.
