The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Luis Planas, assured this Monday that food inflation has already reached its ceiling in Spain and has defended that the measures adopted by the Government have been effective in lowering prices, for which reason he has It has been ruled out for now to extend the VAT reduction to products such as meat and fish.
The minister met this morning with supermarkets, distribution, industry and the primary sector at the Food Chain Observatory to analyze the evolution of food prices and the impact of the VAT reduction on certain products and on This forum has asked all the agents in the chain to transfer the drop in production costs that has already started to final prices.
Planas has ensured that “there are reasons to believe that the CPI for food has reached its ceiling” and has already begun its downward path, as reflected in the records of the National Institute of Statistics (INE). As explained by the minister, a reduction in production costs is already being detected in international markets, but its impact on final consumer prices is slower due to the complexity of the food chain.
In this sense, the main interlocutor of the food distribution sector within the Government has defended the measures adopted by the Executive, in particular the VAT reduction in the basic shopping basket, as well as the 200 euro check for vulnerable families, and it has stressed that, for them to take effect, it is necessary to persist in them.
In this way, the minister has once again refused to extend the tax reduction to other foods such as meat and fish, as the main employers in the sector and Podemos partners have demanded. “It is necessary to persist in the measures adopted, which are effective and must be so over time,” insisted Planas, who has emphasized that the problem of prices, which has its origin in costs, cannot be resolved “in the overnight.”
During the press conference after the meeting, the minister revealed that he has asked all the agents that participate in the food chain to transfer the decrease in production costs to their final prices and has ensured that the “unanimous response” has been “positive”. “Everyone wants to make an effort,” he stated, to later warn companies that the government will be “very vigilant” in monitoring prices to ensure that the lower costs actually translate into lower prices. The shopping cart.
The meeting took place after last week Podemos presented a proposal to the PSOE to deploy a 14.4% bonus in the basic shopping basket, which would be accompanied by a control of the prices set by the supermarkets on a weekly basis and the imposition of fines for those distribution chains that take advantage of this subsidy to improve their profits. For now, the majority partner of the Government rejects it.
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