2023-05-05 20:49:39
Fight once morest inflation. Faced with a rise in food prices close to 15% over one year in April, the government will bring together the heavyweights of the sector in Paris on Thursday, the Ministry of the Economy said on Friday.
The Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire announced on Tuesday his intention to discuss with distributors and the agri-food industry the possibility of extending price reductions on certain products in supermarkets beyond June.
Thursday’s meeting will only bring together distributors, said Bercy, confirming information from BFM Business. A second meeting with the industrialists is planned “in a second time”, on a date which remains to be defined according to Bercy.
Reopen trade negotiations
After inviting distributors to lower prices on a selection of products from March to June as part of the “anti-inflation quarter”, the government is considering new ways to cushion the shock of food inflation beyond the first semester.
Noting that the cost of certain raw materials has been falling for a few months, without this necessarily being reflected in supermarket prices, the executive also wants to push distributors and manufacturers to reopen trade negotiations.
Annual meeting intended to set the price conditions under which distributors buy from their suppliers the products they offer in supermarkets, the last trade negotiations ended on March 1 and resulted in an average increase of around 10% in prices paid by supermarkets to their industrial suppliers.
threat of sanctions
The pressure seems to have weighed this time more heavily on the agri-food industry. Faced with the rise in food prices, “the State has taken its part, distributors too, consumers take it on a daily basis”, underlined Friday the Minister Delegate for Trade Olivia Grégoire during a debate in the National Assembly. “We are now waiting for manufacturers to take theirs” by reopening trade negotiations in order to lower prices, she insisted.
If they do not comply, Olivia Grégoire threatens to “cite by name in the public debate” the recalcitrant actors, or even to sanction them via “tax measures”.
“The government’s method is to say modalities are being considered to extend the anti-inflation quarter, we call for responsibility… It’s a Care Bears method! “commented the communist deputy André Chassaigne Friday during the debate in the Assembly.
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