The confrontation between the government and food manufacturers over inflation continues. Once again, Bruno Le Maire urged the players in the sector to lower final prices in the face of the fall in many inputs such as energy, wheat or even freight.
On BFMTV on Monday, the minister, who will receive industrialists on Wednesday, gives them “until the end of May” to initiate a price cut. “My goal is for the consumer to see prices drop on the shelves,” the minister summed up.
“Do you think that’s fair?”
The Bercy tenant shows some irritation: “When wholesale prices drop and we ask them to come and reopen trade negotiations, they say ‘no’. Do you think it’s fair? I am here to defend the economic public order”.
Bruno Le Maire specifies floor on “regulatory devices so that we force this reopening of trade negotiations.
And to agitate again the threat of “name and shame” that consists of communicating the names of the industrialists who would not play the game. “These are not threats, these are decisions that I will make if necessary. I do not even point the finger, I make the transparency.”
Large distribution also hits the food industry, which they accuse reject the reopening of trade negotiations. “We play the game”, but “unfortunately, opposite, the large industrialists, not the SMEs, do not play the game at all”, said Jacques Creyssel, general delegate of the Federation of Commerce and Distribution (FCD), a few days ago. BFM Business.
“We’re in an absolute morgue, where the big industrialists, the real Scrooge, are there saying to themselves ‘we’re on our growing gold pile and we have falling costs.’ […] but it is not about going back on our prices,” said Jacques Creyssel.
For the general delegate of the CDF, who compares them to a “cartel of speculators”, the agri-food manufacturers “try to buy time”.
Source: BFM TV
