Podemos believes that the measures included in the latest anti-crisis shield are insufficient to stop the rise in food prices and therefore intends to ask the government to intervene in this market to create a basic basket with an equivalent price limit. What these products had before the start of the war in Ukraine, almost a year ago. Ione Bellara’s training proposes to combine this event with a helpline for small businesses, as well as for the hospitality industry launched during the pandemic.
Party sources provided elDiario.es with the details of this measure, which provides that the government will establish a basic basket with a list of food products that must maintain the same price throughout 2023 as on February 20 of last year. This would require market intervention and limiting sellers’ ability to set prices, as they remember doing in pharmacies during the pandemic with masks and self-diagnostic tests.
The idea is that the weight of this type of measurement mainly falls on large surfaces. Podemos proposed supplementing the price cap with a direct aid line for the sector so that “small businesses do not experience situations of financial stress” and revisiting the measures approved by the executive during the pandemic to help the hospitality industry as a role. model. Training believes that this route will be the most efficient and fair to guarantee food at affordable prices for families.
Despite Spain managing to position itself as the eurozone’s lowest-inflation country, the latest consumer price index (CPI) showed the core gauge, which excludes energy and fresh food, rose seven-tenths to 7% from November. Every year (compared to December 2021) in the middle of the Christmas season, mainly due to a sharp increase in prices in supermarkets and clothes and shoes.
The trend has been maintained since the government was able to implement the Iberian mechanism and reduce electricity bills: general inflation is moderate, but food prices are skyrocketing. The second vice president and labor minister, Yolanda Diaz, had already proposed a measure earlier in the term to address the issue, which would have involved reaching an agreement with major distributors to cap the price of a list of 20 or 30 key products. Bread, eggs or milk, but the initiative did not flourish.
The government in late December approved measures to alleviate the economic consequences of the war in Ukraine in the latest royal decree, reducing VAT from 4% to 0% on a basket of basic needs and from 10% to 5% on other needs. products such as oil and paste. Both DÃaz and Podemos criticized the proposal before its approval and later considered that it was not a measure that could help, as the Minister of Labor said in a press conference, where he admitted that although his claim on the matter was different. On the other hand, they managed to negotiate things like a price cap in exchange for a lease renewal.
With this measure, we can call for a more ambitious strategy in this area, like the government took on energy prices when it fought in Brussels to decouple gas prices from electricity bills. In addition, it will offer Plan B to the PSOE in case it decides not to accept the points that its partner is proposing: a bonus on the main basket of products, such as those regulated for several months on fuel. Similarly, reduce food prices to the level of February last year.
To compensate for the public costs of this decision, Podemos plans to impose an extraordinary tax on large distribution networks, such as those approved for banks and large energy companies, and, on the other hand, a series of economic sanctions on companies that use bonuses to increase their profits.
Source: El Diario
