Since March, the costs of many agricultural raw materials or energy have tended to stabilize or even fall, such as wheat, and the government has asked supermarkets and their suppliers to recover as quickly as possible around the negotiating table to review their prices.
“The fruits of these negotiations will bear in the summer, and I can, with some certainty, assure you that at the start of the school year we will have a visible drop in prices on the shelves” food, said Olivia Grégoire in the program “Political Questions” broadcast on France Inter, Franceinfo and Le Monde.
She added that the government was considering sanctioning manufacturers who “wouldn’t play the game”.
“With Bruno Le Maire, we told the agri-food manufacturers, who have rebuilt their margins, (…) that it is their turn to make an effort”, warned the minister delegate, making the comparison with the energy companies whose profits were taxed after the soaring prices of gas and electricity.
A warning to industry
“If the industrialists do not play the game, we (the government, editor’s note) will take our responsibilities”she assures, evoking the hypothesis of a “taxation on agri-food manufacturers”.
The Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire had already issued a warning Thursday evening on France 5: “I do not rule out any decision in the face of large manufacturers who would not pass on the fall in wholesale prices to retail prices.” Olivia Grégoire sets “before summer” as the deadline for seeing the actions of industrialists.
Each year, supermarkets negotiate with their industrial suppliers the new conditions under which they will buy their products from them. The 2023 negotiations, completed on March 1, resulted in an average increase of around 10% in the prices paid by supermarkets to manufacturers.