TWO COMPETING   companies accused of working together to inflate the prices of nutritional cookies distributed to schools are being sued by the for Consumer Protection Authority (Acodeco)

Productos Alimenticios Pascual and  Agro Industrias Alimenticias de Veraguas and Zuellen are accused  of acting as a monopoly to fix the prices by manipulating their bids in public tenders.

The agency said the companies effectively agreed not to bid against each other in 2014 and 2015, and divided up the sales territories.