“We learned a few days ago that the food basket today costs 45 euros more than a year ago. This situation is in fact an attack on the wallets of all of us, but as an attack, it cannot be solved with police measures, nor with inspection actions alone and, let alone, it can be solved with pedagogy for large distribution, as it seems the government now wants to do,” said Paulo Raimundo at the PCP’s 102nd anniversary meeting in Porto.
The communist stressed that price speculation can only be solved with political and not police options, and stressed that the country “again” cannot count on the support of the PSD, CDS-PP, IL and Chega in this regard.
After the government of António Costa said it wanted to understand the current price structure, Paulo Raimundo tried to explain: “For example, growers sell a kilo of onions to large retailers for 53 cents, large retailers sell them to us for 1.24 euros, that is, 134% above what he bought”.
In the case of lettuce, the values are higher than 240%, he stressed.
“The government’s doubts about the pricing structure have been cleared up. Basically it’s simple, distribution squeezes producers and consumers, eat on one side and eat on the other,” he said.
Paulo Raimundo attacked the opposition again and believed that people cannot count on the PSD, CDS-PP, IL and Chega for this fight.
“The Continente of Pingo Doce can count on them to continue to protect their 2 million euros of profit per day,” he criticized.
From a song by Rui Veloso, the communist understood that it is “much more what unites them than what divides them”, and what unites them are the “interests of the economic groups that collect 11 million euros in profit a day, 450,000 euros per hour, 7,600 euros per minute”.
The Food and Economic Security Authority (ASAE) initiated 51 criminal proceedings over speculation in inspections of 960 market participants and found significant profit margins in several products.
For example, margins of 40% to 50% were checked for products such as eggs, oranges, carrots and pork ribs. Above this margin, the box onion stood out.
On Thursday, the Minister of Economy promised to be “inflexible” during a press conference with regard to all anomalous situations in the food sector.
Source: DN
