Once again, inflation is gaining more ground: in one year, food prices have risen by 17% according to INSEE. According to recent forecasts, this price surge should soon calm down or even reverse.
In a letter addressed to manufacturers and supermarkets, the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire asks for negotiations in order to lower the prices on the shelves, as revealed by Franceinfo on April 6. Since then, manufacturers are now responsible for negotiating with large retailers in view of the drop in energy and raw material prices. If this does not succeed, the minister has threatened to summon everyone to Bercy by the end of May.
This Tuesday, April 18, the former minister of Nicolas Sarkozy was invited to the set of Apolline de Malherbe in the program “Face to face” on BFMTV and RMC. Bruno Le Maire confirms his thesis, according to which manufacturers would not be fair in terms of prices. According to him, the rise in tariffs is clearly out of step with the evolution of production costs: “that the downward repercussion is as fast as the upward repercussion” he criticizes. The Minister also thinks that manufacturers and large retailers benefit greatly from the taxes applied to most products in stores: “When the VAT is lowered, it does not go into the pockets of consumers, but into those of distributors and manufacturers. “, he adds.
After this pressure on the industrialists, the latter did not really agree with the words of the member of the government. The boss of the National Association of Food Industries (Ania), Jean-Philippe André, responds on air on BFMTV: “You have to understand that this (Editor’s note: the negotiations) cannot be done in 5 minutes, because ‘we are committed to our suppliers”. In other words, we will potentially find all these actors in Bercy, at the end of May.
Here is a selection of the 6 products whose prices are stabilizing in April, made thanks to the BFMTV basket.
