The proposal to create a shopping basket at a fixed price by the Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, and the Minister of Consumption, Alberto Garzón, has not sat well with supermarkets, who consider it unaffordable to limit the sale value of their items and have made a counteroffer that they do consider viable: reduce or even temporarily suspend VAT on food that the Executive considers basic. The agreement, at the moment, seems distant.
Diaz’s proposal. Last week Yolanda Díaz reported her intention to get the commitment of the large food distributors to create a shopping basket of basic products at a fixed price to reduce the impact of inflation on families. The proposal came after the second vice president of the Government of Spain and Alberto Garzón met with the executive director of Carrefour, Alexandre de Palmas, a supermarket that ad a few days before the launch of a basic basket of 30 products at 30 euros.
Díaz’s intention is that the large supermarkets commit to doing something similar to what Carrefour has done and prepare a basket of basic products with frozen prices whose composition varies every week and includes fresh foods. Although, paradoxically, Carrefour’s own proposal is far from what the minister intends to achieve.
The Carrefour basket. And it is that the French supermarket chain put on sale this Monday its basket of basic products at 30 euros and none of the 30 items chosen is a fresh food, so it does not have eggs, milk or fruit, fresh meat or fish . It also highlights the absence of olive oil, and the presence of other foods that can hardly be understood as basic, such as white chocolate or hamburger buns.
In addition, the ministers want supermarkets to limit prices or lower them at the expense of their own business margins, something that Carrefour has not done either, since 30 products have been included in the basic basket that, together, already added up to a cost of 30 euros before incorporating them into the selection, without any discount, according to the colleagues at DAP.
Employer criticism. To try to address the establishment of this basket of basic products at a fixed price, Díaz met this Monday with the employers of the distribution sector, whose representatives, after the meeting, considered that the minister’s proposal was unfeasible and assured that the supermarket chains are not to blame for the price increases and that limiting the sale value of certain products is not going to solve the problem of food inflation, according to El Mundo.
The businessmen explain that the establishment of a common basket is not consistent with the functioning of the sector, since the chains cannot reach agreements to agree on prices because it would alter competition. And they affirm that they have made this known to the minister at the meeting, where they have made an alternative proposal that the employer considers would be more effective in curbing the escalation of prices in basic products: temporarily reduce or suspend VAT on those items. .
However, Díaz has pointed out that this is neither an intervention in prices nor an imposition, but that the Government is trying to negotiate that each distributor launch its own basket of basic products, in such a way that they compete with each other by offering healthier items at a fixed price. In this way, the minister considers that she avoids legal conflicts and with the National Commission of Markets and Competition, according to La Vanguardia.
Without the presence of the competent ministries. Despite the presence of Consumption, it is striking that the initiative and the negotiation to create the basic food basket at a fixed price are being led by the head of the Ministry of Labor, although she does so by virtue of her other position, that of vice president Second of the Government.
And it is especially striking because Díaz has not counted for the meeting with two of the ministries that have the most powers in the matter, that of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and that of Industry, Commerce and Tourism.
Image | Michael Burrows
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism