Explanations for the wheat price rise cannot be accepted, as there is no reason to increase the price only a month after the harvest, when there are also old stockpiles, the HSU party said.
This parliamentary party described the developments surroundings wheat price changes as "fishing in troubled waters" now when the wheat consumption is growing.
On 1 August, prices of bread and other bakery products went up about 10 percent (i.e. by 0.65-0.7 kuna), which Agriculture Minister Petar Cobankovic and local bakery companies previously ascribed to trends on the global market and changes in prices of wheat and flour.
Responding to the announcement of higher prices in the bakery sector, several trade union federations and the opposition Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) criticised such move several days ago.
HSS officials slammed that as groundless hikes.
The HSS has called on Cobankovic to react in keeping with his authority and do the utmost to protect Croatians from the dominant position of the milling and baking industry. The party has accused the minister of having facilitated this position through his inertia as bread was a strategic social product whose price was used to influence the poorest population.
The average Croat eats about 6.2 kilograms of bread a month, according to a survey conducted by the Central Bureau of Statistics in 2006.