2023-05-11 13:56:57
The government will ask distributors to extend the “anti-inflation quarter”. Bruno Le Marie will meet the big food manufacturers this Thursday to ask them to take on their margins in order to bring down inflation, he announced before a meeting with the heavyweights of the distribution.
“We are going to ask for an effort from those who make the margins. Today, it is the big agri-food manufacturers who make the margins, so they have to participate,” the Minister of the Economy told the press on the sidelines of a visit to the Évry Genopôle. in Essonne.
“Commercial negotiations must reopen with distributors and they must lower retail prices when wholesale prices are falling,” added Bruno Le Maire.
The Minister even threatened industrialists who refused to negotiate: “If ever the agri-food industrialists refuse to enter into this negotiation, which obviously I cannot imagine, we will use all the instruments at our disposal, including the fiscal instrument, to recover margins that would be undue margins made on the backs of consumers. »
The Economy Minister also wants the anti-inflation quarter, which he described as a “success”, to be extended beyond June 15. “We have to find a way to extend this operation in one form or another,” he said, while food inflation is still close to 15% over one year.
Food inflation is likely to “peak at 17%” at the end of June
An operation set up with large retailers which has allowed “millions of our compatriots to have access to food products whose prices have fallen by 13% in recent weeks”, indicated the minister.
Asked about franceinfo on this anti-inflation quarter, the boss of Intermarché Thierry Cotillard declared that its extension would be conditional on the “participation of manufacturers in [l’]effort to lower prices”, even if he announced that the operation was going to continue on certain products.
According to him, food inflation is likely to experience “a peak of 17%” at the end of June. “Either we are able to get manufacturers to lower their prices (…) or nothing happens and inflation remains at 17%,” warned the boss of Intermarché.
Today’s meeting will only be with distributors. A second meeting with the industrialists is planned “in a second time”, on a date which remains to be defined, indicated Bercy last week.
The latest trade negotiations were completed on March 1 and resulted in an average increase of around 10% in the prices paid by supermarkets to their industrial suppliers.
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