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McDonald’s dismisses Russia chain price hike report

Fast food giant McDonald’s Russia denied a Bloomberg news agency report claiming the company was increasing prices in Russia by 1.3% from December 3.

© EPA/MAXIM SHIPENKOV

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Russia’s first ever McDonald’s reopens on Moscow’s Pushkin Square

MOSCOW, December 3. /TASS/. Fast food giant McDonald’s Russia said on Wednesday it had no plans to increase prices.

“We have made no such statement that we are raising prices from today,” spokeswoman Nina Prasolova told TASS, refuting a Bloomberg news agency report claiming the company was increasing prices in Russia by 1.3% from December 3.

But the representative did not exclude prices going up in the chain’s restaurants due to higher raw material and logistics costs, adding that the company was more vulnerable to those factors than to fluctuations of the dollar exchange rate.

Russia's food safety watchdog launched a wave of checks of nearly 200 McDonald's branches across the country in August. Several outlets were shut down in locations extending from Moscow to the Ural Mountains and from St. Petersburg to the southern Stavropol region.

Many outlets have reopened since. But inspections are still proceeding and some restaurants remain closed after court decisions. McDonald’s after-tax profit in Russia has fallen by 30% over the third quarter of 2014 to just over $1 billion.

McDonald's operates 435 restaurants in 85 Russian cities and rates the country one of its top seven major markets outside the United States and Canada, according to its 2013 annual report. The company employs nearly 37,000 people in Russia, serving more than a million customers a day.

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