The reduction of prices for certain products caused a huge scandal, but the Government is preparing a new capping of the commercial surcharge for Romanian products.
Analysts criticize the ceiling of the addition prepared by the Government. Moreover, they predict that it will, in fact, lead to price increases and shortages.
The Minister of Agriculture announced that the Government is preparing a new capping scheme for commercial food additives. This time, however, it is about a ceiling on the price of traditional products.
Currently, there is a list of 17 core products that benefit from the capped 20% surcharge. But the Executive wants this list to be extended, and in this way to lower the price of Romanian products and increase the sales of small traders.
“At the moment, until December 31, the ordinance on the ceiling of the commercial addition was transposed by the Parliament into law.
At the moment, a legislative project is underway, which, together with my colleagues from the Ministry of Agriculture, we want all the agri-food products that are processed in Romania to have a correct trade mark. We no longer want the commercial markup on Romanian products to exceed 20% on the shelves of retailers in Romania, so that Romanian products have a commercial markup limited to 20%, and the products that come from imports, the retailers, put any commercial markup they want .
At the moment, if we do an analysis and we did this analysis, the Romanian agri-food products have a higher commercial value than the products that come from imports, in retail stores”, said Florin Barbu, on Friday, at the Fair for the promotion of agri-food products Romanians, at MADR, according to observernews.ro.
But small traders say that this measure could lead to shortages and could take traditional Romanian products off the market altogether. And this is because, they claim, small traders do not benefit from the support schemes that traders and producers from other countries have, which is why production costs are higher.
The project is to receive a vote in the governing coalition. The authorities must also determine the period during which this ceiling on traditional products will be valid.
