Saudi Gazette report

RIYADH — During the nearly three months period (March 23 to June 13), the Ministry of Commerce inspection teams have carried out more than 255,000 inspection tours to control prices at the commercial establishments in all regions of the Kingdom.

The inspection tours included hypermarkets, food supply shops, wholesale and retail markets, luxury stores, medical devices outlets, pharmacies, steel, cement and building materials stores and gas stations.

During these inspection tours, the Ministry inspectors also detected 19,460 violations, of which 5,360 violations related to price gouging. Consequently, instant fines were imposed on the violators.

The inspection teams carried out direct monitoring of commodity prices through the Electronic Price Monitoring System. Through this system, 217 commodities can be monitored instantly and compared with the commodity prices in neighboring countries. Instant fines were imposed in case of any unjustified excessive prices of goods and products.

The number of inspection tours are listed as follows: The Eastern Region 42,414, followed by Riyadh 40,564, Makkah 35,820, Najran 25,989, Qassim 25,157, Hail 21,209, Madinah 12,478, Asir 10,545, Northern Borders 10,299, Jazan 9,705 rounds, and in the Al-Jouf area it numbered 9,271, Tabuk 6,995, Al-Baha 5,189.

The instant fines are listed as follows: Makkah 4,600, followed by Riyadh 4,460, the Eastern Region 2,362, Jazan 1,402, Madinah 1,230, Hail 1,062, Qassim 1,040, Asir 846, Al-Baha 591, Al-Jouf 564, Najran 465, the Northern Borders 431, and Tabuk 407.

The Ministry of Commerce continues to receive consumers’ reports and complaints round the clock through the MC Consumer Call Center (1900), or through the application of Commercial Violation Report, or via the Ministry’s website.