Price Unit To Slow Increases: Price Boosts to Slow
The Price Commission, somewhat fearful that its policies might not reduce the rate of inflation to its year end goal of 2.5 per cent, announced yesterday it would tighten up a bit on future price increases by large companies.</br></br>Price Commission officials predict that further changes in commission regulations will be forthcoming, but caution that none of the changes will be ÛÏradical.Û</br></br>The commission trimmed the average price increase a firm can reefeive in its flexible Term Limit Pricing agreements to 1.8 per cent from 2 per cent. It said, however, that the new cap would neither affect firms who already have TLPs with a 2 per cent cap or firms currently in negotiation for them.</br></br>The TLP agreements permit a firm to raise individual prices flexibly provided the average price increase during the year for the company remains under a certain specified percentageÛÓ now 1.8 per cent or below.</br></br>The commission ruling, which came on a 4-2 vote, also prohibits the company from raising the price of any individual product more than 8 per cent. The earlier TLP arrangements had no cap on the prices of any particular product, though a commission spokesman said individual TLP agreements did contain such caps.