Bruno Le Maire announced on Monday the launch of an “anti-inflation quarter”, resulting from an agreement with distributors who have undertaken to offer the “lowest possible” prices until June on a selection of products. The government also intends to deploy in the coming months a “food voucher” for the most modest households.
Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire announced on Monday the launch of an “anti-inflation quarter”, resulting from an agreement with distributors who have undertaken to offer the “lowest possible” prices until June on a selection of products. The device, financed thanks to the margins of the distributors, will cost them “several hundred million euros” and the government also intends to deploy in the coming months a “food voucher” for the most modest households, he added. following a meeting in Paris with most of the major retailers.
“I didn’t wait for a public meeting to be cheaper”
At the end of this “anti-inflation quarter”, “we will reopen trade negotiations (theoretically annual and which have just ended, editor’s note) with the major manufacturers so that the fall in wholesale prices, which we are observing on the markets but which is not yet transmitted to everyday consumer products, could be translated “on everyday products, said Bruno Le Maire. The products that will be sold at the “lowest possible” prices will be “chosen freely” by each of the distributors, said the minister, and may vary from one region to another. They will be identifiable by a tricolor “anti-inflation quarter” logo. The bulk of commercial operations will relate to private label products, on which brands have the most “latitude” to set prices, said Carrefour CEO Alexandre Bompard.
Bruno Le Maire’s announcements come as several large retailers have already announced commercial operations in recent days on a selection of everyday consumer products.
“I did not wait for a public meeting to be cheaper,” quipped Monday morning on Cnews the boss of the E. Leclerc centers Michel-Edouard Leclerc, who chose to shun the meeting but must speak during the day on the phone with Bruno Le Maire. Faced with food inflation which reached 14.5% over one year in February according to INSEE, the government had been looking for several months for a mechanism to support purchasing power.