NONTHABURI, March 3 (TNA) — The Commerce Ministry will require individuals to report their stocks of medical masks in an additional bid to solve mask shortages.
Boonyarit Kalayanamit, permanent secretary for commerce, said that the Commerce Ministry would require individuals who had medical masks to report their stocks to the Internal Trade Department.
He said that the government’s committee on product and service prices would set a criterion on the minimum quantity of medical masks that would require the reports.
The new measure would be issued this month and cover general people as well as online and offline vendors. “Today many vendors who sell masks through various channels have huge stocks of the products and many people overprice them,” Mr Boonyarit said.
The new measure would add to previous measures requiring manufacturers and exporters to disclose their stocks, he said.
According to him, the local production capacity stands at 38 million masks a month. The government has set up a center to supervise the distribution of the masks. Most products will go to clinics and the people who need them. The centralized supervision will improve people’s access to medical masks by five times.
The Commerce Ministry has prosecuted 59 people for violations to laws related to their sales of medical masks. Of them, 38 people overpriced masks, 21 did not attach price tags and 5 others were online vendors.
The ministry also planned to take legal actions on the operators of online platforms where medical masks were illegally sold, Mr Boonyarit said. (TNA)
