After Croatia adopted the euro suddenly prices hiked by up to 50 percent and rising energy costs

1. Shopkeepers in Croatia have been accused of cashing in on currency confusion by unfairly bumping up prices since the country switched to the Euro.

Croatia became the 20th country to join the Eurozone on 1 January.

Some experts say shops are rounding up euro-denominated prices or suddenly hiking prices by up to 50 percent, rather than merely converting their prices using the designated conversion rate of 7.53 kuna to 1 euro.

While retailers say prices were largely unaffected by the changeover and blame inflation, the government openly sided with the public and announced measures to combat price hiking, including sending inspectors to stores and service providers, as well as demanding large retail chains to report prices of every single product on a bi-weekly basis.

On Friday 20 January, the state inspectorate said that after checking about 1,000 stores in the two weeks prior they found unjustified price hikes at about a quarter of the establishments, issuing more than 240 fines. (@euronewsit)
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2. Croatia, with an annual inflation rate of 10.8 percent, reported one of the highest inflation rates in the EU last year.

Martin Evacic of the trade sector of the Croatian Association of Employers has said that prices only went up on a small number of products and “certainly did not rise during the conversion period.”

Despite this, consumers were reporting wild price increases of 5 percent to 20 percent a day depending on the product. Igor Vujovic, the president of the Croatian consumers' association, also said that prices are getting wild.

The government has been conducting increased controls and has found that about 40 percent of businesses had unjustifiably hiked prices and so have been fined EUR 234,000.

Prime Minister Andrej Plenković stated that “raising prices, overshadowing the introduction of the euro and contributing to inflation, it's an unfair practice and will not be allowed.”