Hold prices till carbon tax costs evaluated: Australian regulator
19 Jun 2012
The Australian competition watchdog wants businesses to hold prices until it evaluates the impact of the carbon tax on costs.
It has told businesses not to hike prices in response to Labor's carbon tax on the basis of "political noise" around the issue.
Instead, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said, retailers needed to wait and see what impact the pollution price has on their own costs from 1 July.
"Businesses really know what's going on here," ACCC chairman Rod Sims told reporters in Canberra today.
"They know it's a price impact - they don't know necessarily how much it's going to affect them - and I think they know to behave normally and wait to see what the impact will be."
According to Sims, the ACCC would crack down on any business that simply "latched onto" any scare campaign to say their prices were going to go though the roof.
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