The CECU’s criticism to the CNMC to research grocery store margins irritates the sector | Economy | EUROtoday

The resolution of the Confederation of Consumers and Users (CECU) to current this Wednesday a criticism to the National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC) for an alleged unjustified improve in margins in meals distribution opens a brand new entrance within the debate on the value of the procuring basket. The shopper group maintains that supermarkets may have elevated their earnings past what was affordable in a context of sturdy inflation. The distribution sector, nonetheless, rejects this interpretation and questions each the technical foundation of the criticism and its political alternative.

The accusation warns that the market construction may very well be permitting corporations to hold out practices that “attack competition to the detriment of consumers” and insists that this has induced a rise in meals costs that exceeds the value evolution of different merchandise. According to their calculations, primarily based on the evolution of the CPI revealed month-to-month by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), since 2021 meals has turn into virtually twice as costly as the overall shopper value index. CECU insists that this has been attainable because of the asymmetry that exists available in the market. 80% of the agricultural sector are microenterprises with lower than ten staff. On the opposite hand, distribution presents a really excessive diploma of focus, since greater than half of the market is managed by simply 5 – 6 giant teams. This distinction in dimension and energy permits the chains, based on the criticism, to exert decisive stress on suppliers and closing costs.

The CNMC should now analyze intimately whether or not there may be adequate proof earlier than opening a proper file.

The common director of the Spanish Association of Distributors, Supermarkets and Supermarkets (Asedas), Ignacio García Magarzo, defends the functioning of the Spanish market and insists that meals distribution in Spain operates with historically low margins and in an setting of intense competitors. Furthermore, keep in mind that completely different official experiences have attributed the majority of the rise in meals costs since 2021 to exterior elements, resembling the rise in power prices, uncooked supplies or the tensions derived from the conflict in Ukraine. “We are eager to know the details of this information, but the bases that seem to support it are absolutely erroneous, as the Ministry of Economy itself has demonstrated in its communications to the European Union,” says Magarzo, consultant of the principle enterprise affiliation of meals distribution (it brings collectively Mercadona, Día and Lidl).

In that sense, the newest Government Stability Program, equivalent to 2023-2026, signifies that many of the meals inflation in 2022 had its origin within the improve in the price of imports. The doc maintains that enterprise margins weren’t the principle driver of the value improve. The CNMC, for its half, revealed in August 2023 an evaluation on the applying of the VAT discount on fundamental meals. After analyzing greater than 60,000 costs from the principle operators, the regulator concluded that the tax discount was absolutely handed on to the patron in lower than 1 / 4 and didn’t detect “systematic” anti-competitive habits, not even in areas with a excessive focus of supermarkets.

From the National Association of Large Distribution Companies (Anged) – the employers’ affiliation of El Corte Inglés or Carrefour – they’ve restricted themselves to saying that they don’t have particular particulars of the criticism and that for the second they won’t enter into the controversy. Of course, keep in mind that the Ministry of Agriculture, by way of the Chain Observatory, periodically analyzes worth chains and has concluded that the hyperlinks within the meals chain, notably distribution, “have behaved responsibly.”

The controversy has additionally generated debate inside the shopper sphere itself. Fernando Moner, president of the Valencian Association of Consumers and Users (Avacu) and former president of CECU, assures that his group, which is a part of CECU, was not consulted earlier than the criticism. Moner additionally maintains that the value observatories that they’ve managed for years haven’t detected anomalous will increase in earnings in retail commerce, and hyperlinks the rise in costs to the rise in manufacturing prices. In this matter, the complaining affiliation is supported by information from the Observatory of Business Margins, which in a report from December final 12 months concluded that this indicator has grown steadily since 2019, each within the economic system as a complete and, particularly, within the agri-food chain.