Government the possibility of extending the Fair Prices to local companies was beginning to cool off, a channel covering Chinese supermarkets, department stores and neighborhood businesses. The Secretary of Commerce, Matías Tombolini, talks suspended to put together a basket of 40 to 60 base bosses so that they can compete with the prices offered by hypermarkets. In that office, they recognize him now “the negotiation is complicated” even if they don’t rule out continuing to work afterwards.
Sources of business and chambers of commerce entrusted to clarion that the topic had been discussed for two weeks, but he never made any progress due to the supply difficulties of a fragmented universe of companies, many of which are far from the country’s large urban centres. “There have been negotiations, but nothing concrete yet”said the owner of a wholesale firm.
This is the third time an attempt has been made to extend the regulated price program (like the current Fair Price) outside the large supermarket chains. Paula Español and Roberto Feletti, two of Tombolini’s predecessors, had already tried without success. The initiative is an exact replica of “Super Close”which was released in 2020, and “+ Service Rates”of 2021, which has never been able to settle for an optional due to lack of goods.
“The Super Cerca basket contained 60 consumer products, but the big problem was the supply. In AMBA wholesalers, only 17 had stock,” said Fernando Savore, president of the Buenos Aires province’s federation of shopkeepers. The manager argues that the main difficulty for small businesses is the price gap they have with the big chains, which doubles in some product categories.
10 days ago, Tombolini agreed to make fair prices more flexibles ensure program continuity in a context of accelerating inflation. From this month, raised the ceiling by 5% per month (in two phases) for the next 90 days for a universe of 25,000 consumer products. On the other hand, it allowed for a 3.8% increase in the basket of 2,000 items that have been frozen since February.
Manufacturers and suppliers insist on replicating the same recipe in independent supermarkets, warehouses and local businesses it’s not an easy task. “There is no use closing a deal with wholesalers if the distributors are not at the table,” said an official source to justify the delay in implementation.
The companies are not entirely clear on the final proposal. “It seems to me that the main concern is the price gap between supermarkets and the traditional channel,” they speculate.
In the midst of announcing the package of measures to contain inflation, the Government slipped in a small pearl alluding to the proximity basketball project. Referring to the opening of duty-free food imports, the official statement underlined that in the face of the alleged refusal of wholesalers and large companies, Chinese supermarkets and local shops could be supplied with a basket of products defined by the Secretariat of Commerce, imported from the Central Market “to break with the pricing abuse practiced by these companies when supplying these local outlets“.
Also announced as part of the package of measures to contain inflation was the creation of a new superstructure to monitor online price markups along the entire value chain.
This is the Monitoring, Traceability of Commercial Operations Unit, which will collect information from various public bodies (including Customs, the Central Bank, AFIP, Secretariats of Commerce and Production and the National Securities Commission) to detect and “correct” excessive increases in inputs, intermediate goods and finished products of all kinds.
Source: Clarin
