The fall in household food consumption, which is reflected in the reduction in the volume of the shopping basket purchased in supermarkets, is not due to the rise in prices. Or, at least, not exclusively. The desire to go out to eat after the confinement has translated into a strong rebound in extra-domestic consumption and has influenced the collapse of direct demand for food.
That is the theory defended by the black-on-white government in a parliamentary response to a question in which Néstor Rego Candamil, a BNG deputy, demands measures to reverse the “alarming decline in the consumption of fish and shellfish”, a collapse that relates with the fact that the Executive continues to refuse to extend the VAT reduction to this basic food, to which, in his opinion, a “luxury” tax rate is being applied.
In its response, the Government admits that “it is true that food consumption in households, at a general level, has decreased during the last year”, specifically, by 8.7% in 2022 compared to 2021. Although it ensures that ” This decrease, without forgetting the influence that the increase in prices may have, cannot be attributed to a single reason”.
In this sense, the Executive adds in its letter that “it is very possible that this year 2022, in which most of the measures derived from Covid-19 have been eliminated, there will have been a certain rebound effect in consumption, in the fact that Spanish consumers have gone out more to consume abroad -according to their data, extra-domestic consumption has grown by 16.8%- and have traveled outside the country when the restrictions were withdrawn”.
Supported by this argument, the Government maintains that the decrease in the purchase of food to consume at home is related to the fact that families are going out more to eat out after the end of the restrictions due to the pandemic. However, straight away it recognizes that food consumption in homes also registers a significant drop -of more than 5%- when compared to the situation prior to the outbreak of the coronavirus.
What’s more, if the data on which it is based are analyzed -which are available on the website of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, but which it does not provide in the answer- it is observed that the collapse in fish consumption is very higher than the average for total food, reaching 15.2% compared to 2021 and 13.2% compared to 2019. And the same with meat, which is another of the products excluded from the VAT reduction, which it registers a decline of 12.8% over 2021 and 12.5% ??over 2019.
However, the Government insists in its reply that, with the measures adopted so far, “a moderate increase in food prices has been achieved.” And at this point he once again leaves the ball in the businessmen’s court: “An effort has been requested from the entire food chain to contain prices, and in particular from distribution so that, within the framework of free competition, it raises actions that favor said containment, always with respect to the Law of the Chain”.
Along the same lines, the First Vice President and Minister of Economic Affairs, Nadia Calviño, defended last Tuesday during the press conference after the Council of Ministers that the measures put in place “are clear”, in reference to the drop in VAT or to the check of 200 euros. She also assured that the Government has welcomed in a “very favourable” way the initiatives of supermarkets that have launched offers of baskets at low prices and urged that the competition between the different groups “continue to lead to a moderation of food prices”. .
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
