In an attempt to put out the fire of inflation on food products on the eve of the mobilization on pensions, the government announced an "anti-inflation quarter", a commercial operation which leaves great freedom to supermarkets, as well than a food check which should see the light of day in 2023.

The commercial operation which aims to offer, according to the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire, "the lowest possible price" on a selection of "hundreds" of products left to the choice of distributors, must extend until June .

It will cost "several hundred million euros" to large retailers, according to the minister who sealed the agreement Monday at Bercy in the presence of the main representatives of the sector (Carrefour, Intermarché, System U, Casino, Aldi... ), with the notable exception of the leader in terms of market share, E.Leclerc.

Present at the same time on CNews, the media president of the brand's strategic committee, Michel-Edouard Leclerc criticized a selection of products which "gives the impression that we are catching up on the rest".

To protect the French against food inflation, this morning we reached an agreement with large retailers: they undertake to set up an “anti-inflation quarter”, starting this month of March.



What does that mean ?

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– Bruno Le Maire (@BrunoLeMaire) March 6, 2023

Bruno Le Maire also announced "a food check for the most modest".

It "will be done on a territorial basis, probably the department, so as to be as close as possible to consumers and as close as possible to agricultural producers as well", he specified, assuring that "experimentation will be launched in the next few months".

To finance the "anti-inflation quarter", the brands will draw on their margins.

But some did not wait for this announcement to launch their own commercial operations, intended to attract or retain their customers in a context where consumers are looking for low prices or promotions.    

 Tricolor logo

The political stakes are major for the government, which has been working for months with the sector to try to control the soaring food prices, estimated at 14.5% in one year in February by INSEE.

Initially, the project promoted by the Minister Delegate in particular for Trade Olivia Grégoire concerned an "anti-inflation basket" which would have allowed consumers to compare prices between brands, but the large retailers had slowed down.

It is now a question of offering consumers the "lowest possible price", an uninviting formulation, criticized by the consumer association UFC-Que Choisir.

“In the absence of a regulatory definition of these prices, an allegedly + broken + price could only be the usual price”, Olivier Andrault, agriculture / food project manager for this association, explained to AFP in early February.

Bruno Le Maire assured Monday that the services of his ministry, in particular the Directorate General for Competition, Consumption and the Repression of Fraud (DGCCRF), would carry out checks in stores to ensure that distributors will not weigh the commercial operation on their agro-industrial or agricultural suppliers.

The products concerned will also be identifiable by a tricolor "anti-inflation quarter" logo.

And most of the commercial operations will mainly relate to private label products, that is to say those which, like Reflets de France, Marque Repère, Marque U, are owned by the brands and do not fall within the scope of the negotiations. annual meetings with manufacturers.

Reopening of negotiations

In exchange for this agreement, the distributors obtained from Bercy that at the end of this "anti-inflation quarter", trade negotiations with agro-industry suppliers, which ended on March 1, be relaunched. .

"We will reopen trade negotiations with major manufacturers so that the drop in wholesale prices, which we are seeing on the markets", can "translate" also into the shelves, explained the Minister of the Economy.

The negotiations which ended on March 1 resulted in an average increase of some 10% in the prices paid by supermarkets to manufacturers, according to the two camps.

A reopening of discussions, however, risks being unwelcome by manufacturers who have been asking for months to sell their products at a higher price to supermarkets in order to compensate for the increase in their production, energy, transport, packaging or various raw material costs.

With AFP

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