Under pressure to act to curb rising prices, big retailers ramped up announcements of price dodging on Sunday, making the government’s plan for a single “anti-inflation basket” superfluous. In mid-January, Bercy said he was working on developing a basket that would initially include around 20 necessities and then around 50. But the idea ran into the impossibility of the government regulating prices too rigorously, for reasons of competition.
“It is complicated because the large distributors do not necessarily agree on the basket,” admitted the Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau in RMC. Without waiting for a government project, System U had been the first brand since the beginning of February to launch its own basket of “150 products at cost prices” for an “indefinite period”, contenting itself with the minimum margin provided by law for these items. .
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This weekend, Carrefour, Intermarché and Monoprix did the same. Carrefour announced to the JDD that it was going to launch its own “anti-inflation basket” in mid-March, made up of 200 products sold at two euros on average and “at locked prices” until mid-June. These are 100 “everyday” products and another 100 labeled “healthy” with Nutri-Score A and B, marketed under the Carrefour and Simpl brands.
And Intermarché for its part announced on Sunday the launch of a campaign on “500 anti-inflationary products”, for 470 of them own-brand items and for 30, “fresh products from the traditional shelf -meat, fish, fruit or vegetables”, according to a release.
Monoprix, a firm of the Casino group, announced the same day about the maintenance until the end of June of its “Monopetitsprix” system of 300 products at locked prices, to which an additional 87 products will be added at “controlled prices”.
The large distribution gathered today in Bercy
“We are discussing, and we will discuss again tomorrow in a constructive way, with the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire and the Minister of Commerce Olivia Grégoire on the solutions that will help the French to face the shock of inflation that is affecting their power. to ‘buy’, said Thierry Cotillard, president of the Les Mousquetaires group to which the Intermarché brand belongs.A meeting is scheduled for Monday morning in Bercy between the two ministers and the big retailers, during which a new report will be released of the General Inspectorate of Finance on the margins in the food chain, from farmers to consumers and even by the food industry.
The president of the strategic committee of the Leclerc centers, Michel-Edouard Leclerc, for his part, denies the responsibility of the industrialists for the rise in the prices of food products, which accelerated to 14.5% annually in February, according to a provisional estimate from INSEE. According to him, to the previous increases will be added the increase of 10% on average that the agro-industrialists managed to impose on the supermarkets during the negotiations that have just concluded, so that prices will rise by 25% in 18 months. He accused Europe 1 suppliers of not having been “transparent” and deplored “a kind of industrialist culture that is done to the detriment of the consumer.”
For the general director of Carrefour, Alexandre Bompard, too, the level of inflation for food “will remain in double digits until this summer, probably above what is currently reached,” he told the JDD. Faced with this situation, he said he was satisfied that Bruno Le Maire had “decided to leave each one the freedom to define the operations of his choice.”
Source: BFM TV
