At the Cabinet session, which was held on 26 March, 2020, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov discussed the provision of groceries to residents.
Deputy Prime Minister overseeing trade Chary Gylydzhov gave a progress report on executing the instructions of the head of state to provide residents with an extensive variety of groceries and maintain “stable prices”, the state information agency TDH reports.
For this purpose, according to Gylydzhov, an intersectoral commission was set up to work out measures to increase the volume of import substitution production and provide support to local producers.
The official was quoted as saying that the list of essential imported groceries has been carefully reviewed and the works are underway to import, make sufficient supplies of and store groceries as well as to сalculate their value.
Let us recall that after the closure of Turkmenistan-Iran border in connection with the outbreak of coronavirus potatoes have disappeared from the counters of retail outlets and the prices of fruit imported from Iran have gone up.
Following this, the authorities of Turkmenistan announced that they were holding negotiations with Russia on the import of potatoes and with Uzbekistan and Taijikistan on the import of onions.
Over the past three years Turkmenistan has been experiencing a shortage of bread, flour, chicken meat, eggs, sugar and vegetable oil in state-run stores owing to the economic recession and state regulation of prices.
These groceries are available at privately-owned retail outlets at considerably higher prices (they also occasionally disappear from the counters).Vendors at local bazaars are often forced to indicate the price established by the authorities despite the fact that these groceries are actually sold at higher prices.