Emil-Florian Dumitru, deputy: "The ceiling on the commercial addition evaded by hypermarkets"

The capping of the commercial addition to certain foods will not work because of the position of hypermarkets vis-à-vis producers, said Emil-Florian Dumitru, the vice-president of the Committee for Agriculture in the Chamber of Deputies, quoted by DC News.

Emil-Florian Dumitru said: "On the one hand, I don't believe in such a measure. Why? Because always the one with the most bargaining power - namely the supermarket - will seek to recoup its losses on the 21 products by raising the prices of the other products. I talked about milk with 1.5% fat (n.red- the price of which is capped) - the price increased to 3.5%, a price which, after that, also went down, to the producer of the raw material , and crashed. Basically, farmers sell below cost price. That's not the mechanism I think we can use - capping. Any intervention by the state between the commercial relations between two private partners does nothing but make each of the two with greater bargaining power look for solutions to gain what they lost from this interventionist area. (...) It seems to me that there is also a bit of hilarity in the approach. On the one hand, we are talking about cozonac. Is cozonacul a product that Romanians should consume regularly? Not! It is consumed only in certain periods of the year and practically it is a consumption that does not provide the daily basket of the consumer. Sauerkraut, rice, broth. In Romania, as far as I know, we probably have two factories that process tomatoes. I think, rather, we should have done like France. There we have a different mechanism. The interprofessional organizations - i.e. the product chain producer - processor - transporter - trader - sit down at the table, adopt an interprofessional agreement with a standard contract, with mirror rights and obligations, supervised by the Ministry of Agriculture. Then you also balance supply and demand. Maybe the supermarket also needs a certain amount of a certain category of product, and then it knows how to make a prediction and the producer, the processor - to be able to deliver that product regularly throughout the year".

The vice-president of the Committee for Agriculture in the Chamber of Deputies stated that the measure of capping commercial additions to 21 categories of agri-food products will not generate a positive impact, because hypermarkets will not lower prices, because they want to ensure a certain profit margin and have a very high bargaining power. In the opinion of Florian Dumitru, the only solution is the association of producers to increase their bargaining power.

We note that in October the Government extended for another three months (until January 31, 2024) the capping of the commercial surcharge at 20% for 21 products. The Minister of Agriculture, Florin Barbu, stated after the extension of the measure that the price has decreased in supermarkets, although all kinds of photos with product prices have appeared that show the opposite.