2023-06-09 08:38:22
Pasta, cereals, poultry… The 75 major agri-food manufacturers have made a commitment to Bercy to lower the prices of hundreds of products affected by soaring inflation on the shelves, as of July, announced Friday the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire. “I tell the French that from July, on a certain number of references and products, the prices will drop. And we will check it, and we will sanction those who do not play the game”, he declared on BFMTV/RMC.
“This is what the industrialists committed to” at a meeting Thursday in Bercy, he added, stressing that this initiative was aimed at “several hundred everyday consumer products” the list of which will be sent to him “ next week”. Among the products concerned, Bruno Le Maire cited pasta, poultry, cereals or even oils, namely those whose “prices on the wholesale markets are falling”.
“When wholesale prices drop, (…) it sometimes takes three months, four months, five months before the price of the products concerned (…) also drops,” he explained. Manufacturers immediately accepted “an early indexation” without which the drop in wholesale prices would only have been passed on “around September, October, or even a little later”.
The rise in consumer prices rose to 5.1% in May over one year, but that of food products still reached 14.1%. The big food manufacturers, such as Coca-Cola, L’Oréal, Mondelez or Nestlé, have also committed to reopening trade negotiations with supermarkets on contracts concluded for 2023, according to the minister. The government had again put pressure this week on manufacturers who were reluctant to renegotiate in order to quickly lower prices on the shelves.
Bruno Le Maire had raised the threat of a publication, “before the end of June”, of the names of those who would not play the game. “The Minister of the Economy does not have a ruler in his hands thanks to which it could lower or raise prices. On the other hand, it has the power of injunction vis-à-vis manufacturers and distributors to tell them ‘you get together, you find agreements and you lower prices’ . This is what we arrived at yesterday” (Thursday), he said again.
“The margin rate of agribusiness companies rose sharply in the first months of 2023 and they more than made up for the losses they had made in the past two years,” he noted. . “There is a part of the margins that you have to return to the consumer,” he insisted on addressing these companies. “You do it, so much the better and I think you will. If you don’t, we’ll get it back through taxes.” For their part, supermarkets will extend their anti-inflation operation until the end of 2023, through which they sell a selection of products of their choice at the “lowest possible price”.
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