Yerevan/Mediamax/. At today’s session, State Commission for Protection of Economic Competition Protection of Armenia (SCPEC) made a decision on penalizing “City Petrol Group” (CPS) taking a dominant position on the petrol and diesel oil market in Armenia for abusing its dominant position.

The company takes up almost the half of the market of import and petrol and diesel oil sales market and the other half is shared by 3 companies – Mika Corporation, Flesh and Max UR.

The administrative case against the CPS revealed that the company violated the law on competition.

In particular, the Commission found out that due to the price policy of the company, small petrol stations owned by private citizens go bankrupt and their owners are forced to sell their businesses to CPR on unprofitable conditions.

“It found out that the company sells fuel from wholesale bases at the same rate which it sells it in dozens of its own petrol stations. Dozens of cases were discovered when the owners of small petrol stations were forced to sell their business to CPS or conclude a contract with the company on joint use of the object on unprofitable conditions. Under these contracts, 98% of the profit will go to CPS and the remaining 2%- to the actual owner of the petrol station. In fact, operating a business set up by another business subject, CPS yielded all of its profit. For instance, the company has 8 petrol stations only in the town of Vanadzor and 7 of them have been purchased this way”, the statement of SCPEC reads.