Georgia’s Competition Agency Fines Major Fuel Retailers

On July 15, the Georgian Competition Agency fined the country’s five largest petrol and diesel retailers a combined total of 51.6 million Lari (approximately $22.7 million) for alleged price-fixing.

Financial penalties were imposed on SOCAR Georgia Petroleum, Sun Petroleum Georgia, Rompetrol Georgia, Wissol Petroleum Georgia and Lukoil Georgia.

Giorgi Barabadze, head of the agency, explained that the companies had been violating the competition rules and regulations on the retail petrol and diesel market through artificial import barriers and cartel-type fixing schemes in the period of 2008-2014.

The apparently breached legislation in questions is the Law on Competition, adopted in 2012, which deals with price-fixing, practices that restrict market access, and market partitioning by territory or by customer.

Three other companies were also fined a combined total of 3 million Lari while 32 smaller companies also received minor penalties.

The Competition Agency said that financial penalties were imposed based on an 1100-page report examining the retail fuel market, which was conducted from November 2014.

The report is not yet available. But the Competition Agency has already informed that some parts of the report will not be made public because of issues related to the companies’ commercial confidentiality.

Nino Japarashvilia