A speech report in support. “There have been no inflation speculators in the food industry,” Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire said in an interview with the newspaper on Saturday. the parisian which seems to confirm the conclusions of various parliamentary reports.
In a context where the rate of inflation of food products was close to 12% per year in October according to INSEE, “I asked the General Inspection of the Treasury (IGF) to carry out a study,” he told the N.2 newspaper of the government.
“particular cases”
According to the IGF report consulted this Saturday by AFP, “in total, the rise in food prices results from the combination of several factors: war in Ukraine, post-Covid recovery, global warming, animal health crisis and various factors of a economic”. (competitiveness of the economy, labor shortage, etc.).
At the end of June, the president of the strategic committee of the E.Leclerc stores, Michel-Edouard Leclerc, regretted that “half of the increases requested” by the manufacturers in the framework of the renegotiations on the price of food destined for the sale in supermarkets were “non-transparent” and were “suspicious”.
However, a Senate report published on July 19 had concluded that, with the exception of a few “specific cases,” there was not a “widespread phenomenon of excessive increases.”
A few days later, a report by the deputies Aurélie Trouvé (La France insoumise) and Xavier Albertini (Horizons) had failed to detect “systemic abusive behavior by manufacturers or distributors”.
For its part, the IGF selected a sample of twelve everyday food products (chicken cutlet, natural yoghurt, baguette, etc.) and studied the evolution over time of the gross margin of the different actors in the production.
The analysis reveals, on the one hand, “that the agri-food industry has compressed its margins” and, on the other hand, that “supermarkets have not contributed to raising consumer prices for food products”, thus denying the assumption of inflation suffered only by products consumer end.
future decisions
Despite this shared effort, and lower inflation in France than in other European countries, the IGF points out that in one year, “certain food products have experienced particularly high price increases with, for example, +60% for oils , +22% % for flour, +20% for pasta and +16% for poultry”.
Always on the question of purchasing power, Bruno Le Maire proposed in his interview with Le Parisien to organize at the beginning of 2023 a “convention on the distribution of value”, within the Renaissance party.
Although he reaffirms his preference for the “employee dividend” in the interview, the Minister of Economy suggests associating within this convention “economists, business leaders, employees and opposition groups to identify new ideas in addition to the work carried out with the agents social”. “.
Finally, Bruno Le Maire recalled his intention for France to establish “a global minimum corporate tax of 15% at the beginning of 2023”, if an agreement is not reached at the European level before December.
The Netherlands, Italy, Spain and Germany will introduce similar national taxes “on the same schedule”, in line with a commitment made in September.
Source: BFM TV
