2023-08-10 11:08:46
Los food distributorsincluding supermarkets and hypermarkets, reduced the final prices of the affected products after the VAT reduction on basic foods that entered into force in January 2023 to deal with the rise in prices, according to a study by the National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC).
Specifically, the CNMC has analyzed how the main self-service food distributors have transferred the VAT reduction to the price of its products. The study concludes that there are no signs of systematic problems or differences between geographical areas with a higher and lower concentration of establishments.
“No detections have been made. consistent clues lack of tax transfer,” says Competence in the conclusions of the report published this Thursday, which coincide with the assessments of other organizations, such as the Bank of Spain about this theme.
Likewise, and indicatively, the CNMC does not perceive that the different concentration levels between provinces or municipalities have affected the degree of final price reduction after said measure.
However, and taking as reference the price variations observed between December 27 and January 4, the CNMC appreciates that in general there has been a high translation of the VAT reductionand that this has been independent of the level of competition in the provinces and municipalities.
According to the study, the price reduction is slightly higher than expected in some provinces, which is explained by the existence of extreme positive variations registered for some products horticultural in these provinces, which bias the average upwards.
Thus, excluding the three products that have registered the greatest variations (artichokes, bananas and oranges), the mean variation of the prices of discounted products in the Spanish provinces has been between -3.6% and -4.8%regardless of the concentration of the provincial market.
Sources of information for conducting the study
The study has been prepared in response to a request received by the CNMC from the Secretary of State for the Economy and Business Support preparation of an analysis on the impact of the VAT reduction of certain foods operated in Royal Decree-Law 20/2022, of December 27.
For the preparation of the report, the CNMC has taken into account information from numerous sources, including 23,995 surface data of daily consumer goods retail distribution establishments, six different statistical databases of prices from the INE, he MAPA and Eurostat and, in addition, more than 60,000 price data collected by the CNMC for retail distributors and establishments all the provinces of Spain on different dates from December 2022 to May 2023.
The data collected and used include provinces where the measure was not applied due to no VAT and unaffected products close characteristics to other affected products, in order to carry out geographical comparisons and between products.
In general, it has been chosen collect information from establishments located in the provincial capitals given the important local component of the competition dynamics in this activity and, in addition, in this way it is ensured that the data of each province come from environments with conditions of similar competition to provide greater homogeneity to the information. The required groups have been the ten largest retail distribution groups nationwide in 2021: Alcampo, Aldi, Bon Preu, Carrefour, Consum, DIA, El Corte Inglés, Eroski, Lidl and Mercadona.
VAT reduction provided that underlying inflation exceeds 5.5%
He Government decided at the end of june keep deletion for six months more than 4% VAT which applies to all foods First needincluding bread, flour, milk, cheese or eggs, and reduction from 10% to 5% of oil and pasta.
within the staple foods who see eliminated the 4% VAT highlight the common breadas well as the common bread dough frozen and the frozen common bread intended exclusively for the elaboration of common bread; the bread-making flours; the following types of leche produced by any animal species: natural, certified, pasteurized, concentrated, skimmed, sterilized, UHT, evaporated and powder; the cheeses; eggs and fruits, vegetables, legumes, tubers and cereals, which have the status of natural products of according to the Food Code.
all these tax reductions will remain in force until December 31, 2023, provided that the YoY rate of underlying inflation is above 5.5%.
If it falls below that rate in the month of Septemberwhose data will be known in the month of October, would recover the usual VAT rate in the previously mentioned foods in the last two months foreseen for the application of the measure. That is, from the November 1st.
#CNMC #confirms #supermarkets #transferred #VAT #reduction #basic #foods #final #prices #idealistanews