Ukrainian bread producers need tools to effectively regulate unfair trade practices when interacting with retail chains, since existing "conflicts of interest" in commercial relations negatively affect product suppliers, end consumers, and the state as a whole, First Vice President of the All-Ukrainian Association of Bakers Yuriy Duchenko told Interfax-Ukraine.

At the same time, according to him, to date, five bills have been registered in the Verkhovna Rada aimed at regulating the interaction of suppliers with retail chains, but none of them fully solves the existing problems of the bakery industry.

According to Duchenko, today in Ukraine there continue to be negative trends in the development of trade relations in retail trade, in particular, network customers widely use unfair trading practices, and their dictatorial terms of cooperation with manufacturers and suppliers are due to the fact that national retail chains have a significant market power in relations with manufacturers due to a large share in Ukrainian food retail.

According to the expert, large suppliers and manufacturers of food products to retail chains note that one of the most important problems in cooperation with retail chains is the imposition of additional services on the supplier, which usually do not have real economic content and do not bring additional benefits to him. It is also noted that retail chains often set disproportionate prices for such services or their "formal" provision, when services are not provided in full or require additional payment for imposed "additional" services, which significantly increases the cost of the primary service.

Based on general information from industry manufacturers, these additional services are based on the transfer of retail network risk financing to the supplier or manufacturer of products. These include, for example, the obligation to pick up unsold goods, although the supplier cannot directly influence the order/volume of a batch of goods delivered to a particular store, the conditions for its sale, the demand for goods, as well as a number of other factors beyond the control of the supplier.