The Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, will receive the CEOS this afternoon of the major supermarket chains analyze the economic situation and ask them to rearrange prices, amidst the acceleration of food and drinks in the first week of March despite the decline in sales of the business, before knowing the February inflation.
The meeting is scheduled for 5.30 pm. He will do it with the managers of Coto, La Anónima, Cencosud, Carrefour AND Monkey, without the presence of the presidents or the union (Associazione Supermercati Uniti). “It’s about discussing the evolution of the macroeconomy, as we encountered last week with the mass consumption sectors,” say Treasury sources.
INDEC will announce February inflation on Tuesday. which would be around 15%. This is a descendant from record 25.5% in December and 20.6% in January. However, the Central Bank’s Survey of Market Estimates (REM) forecasts 14.3% for March, revealing the difficulties in continuing to reduce inflation from high levels.
Within this framework, the government seeks to ensure that prices “continue to fall” and reflected in the gondolas. Presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni explained the progress of the meeting in a press conference on Monday “to understand why the decision was made to do promotions instead of lowering the price,” which according to the official has an impact on the INDEC inflation measurement
Last Thursday Caputo received the CEOs of 17 consumer companies, especially food, to whom he asked that they “accompany” the deceleration signals of inflation and made them understand that there will not be a sharp jump in the dollar, while the sector expressed concern about the sharp decline in sales of the most important brands, hit by the adjustment plan and the recession.
“Excellent meeting yesterday with consumer goods producers. It is a coincidence that prices will continue to fall and that it is important to make the real price per unit of products transparent so that they can be adequately detected by the Indec”, the minister said online. X last week, where he targeted promotions and discounts.
The official specified that many companies “They priced their products expecting a catastrophic scenario this has not materialized.” “Today they have very high list prices that people mostly do not validate, and they have already begun to lower them, but through promotions, from type “60% discount on the second unit” or up to “2×1”He added.
And he made sure of it.”These discounts, although not recorded by Indec Due to their mode of measurement in logical units, they are a clear sign of inflationary deceleration”. In that meeting Caputo questioned the food producers and underlined this prices have gone up “a lot” and that “they exaggerated”as they continue to rise above average.
Mass consumer societies hold other connections accountable. On the one hand, producers of raw materials (such as corn, wheat, cocoa, milk, meat, etc.) affected by drought have experienced delays or their inputs have become more expensive due to the 54% devaluation. And on the other to supermarkets, which in the previous administration had committed to careful pricing and fair prices.
In the chains, however, they target the new price lists sent by the producers. “The one who increases prices excessively is the industry and with promotions it tries to compensate for what it loses in volume because the market does not validate the prices”, underline in the sector, dismissing: “They cannot expect supermarkets to absorb the increases.” from suppliers”.
SN
Source: Clarin
