The tone rose again between Bruno Le Maire and the food industry on inflation. The Economy Minister has announced that he will convene industrialists and distributors “starting next week” to speed up their difficult trade negotiations with a view to lowering prices.
Mais pour Léonard Prunier, Président de la FEEF (Fédération des entreprises et des entrepreneurs de France) who represents 22,000 SMEs and ETI who fournissent la grande distribution et la restauration, on ne peut pas mettre les industriels et les petites et moyennes entreprises dans le meme Bag.
“Our companies today absolutely do not have the ability to reopen negotiations to lower prices. Many of them need to reopen negotiations to continue to deliver the increases that we are experiencing today. There are no reductions in our purchases, whether it is energy, sugar, pig…”, he underlines on the set of Good Evening Business this Wednesday.
“Our purchases don’t go down today”
“We were not able to pass on our price increases, SMEs and ETIs had asked (distributors, editor’s note) for an average price increase of 10%, which was less important than multinationals and we got 6%, so there are 4 to go points with respect to a request that is as fair as possible”, adds the manager.
The official questions the government’s finding of a significant drop in the price of certain raw materials and energy, which he believes should lead to lower prices for consumers.
“Our purchases do not fall today”, repeats Léonard Prunier. “There are some raw materials in which the international markets have changed trend but we continue to rise” citing energy or even the minimum wage. “All of these are costs that we incur and we need to rebuild our margins, our cash flow.”
And remember that “if our companies ever go badly, it is employment and investment” that will suffer.
Léonard Prunier also underlines that the government’s offensive is aimed at “big companies, big industrialists”.
Source: BFM TV
