The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has on Thursday (18 June) announced the launch of an investigation against four convenience stores and pharmacies over suspected excessive and unfair pricing of hand sanitiser products during COVID-19 pandemic.
The agency did not reveal the details of the stores.
The CMA clarified that investigation is at an early stage and no assumption about the breach of competition law can be made at this stage.
“The CMA has not reached a view on whether there is sufficient evidence of an infringement of competition law for it to issue a statement of objections to any of the parties under investigation,” it said in a statement.
The regulator has in May said that it has written to 264 firms about price rise for essential products during the pandemic.
These firms accounted for over 3,100 complaints, around a third of the total number of actionable complaints received by the taskforce set up the CMA.
However, the price-related complaints to the CMA have considerably declined from early April, when it has received over 2,500 complaints on large price rises for personal hygiene products and food products.
The largest price increases among them were on hand sanitiser, with a reported median rise of 367 percent.
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