The reduction of prices for certain food products triggered a real scandal among the population, but the Romanian Government seems determined to intervene in the market again. The last initiative foresees a new capping of the commercial surcharge for traditional Romanian products.
The Minister of Agriculture, Florin Barbu, announced that the Executive is working on a scheme to limit the commercial addition to traditional foods. The idea is to expand the list of products that benefit from this cap, in the hope that their prices will fall and that small traders will have a competitive advantage over large retailers.
Currently, there is already a list of 17 basic products that benefit from a trade markup capped at 20%. However, the Government wants to extend this measure to further support domestic manufacturers and small businesses, according to CNN’s Antena 3.
The main argument of the initiative is that Romanian agri-food products have a higher commercial value than imported ones, which puts domestic producers at a disadvantage. Thus, capping the commercial addition could balance the competition between Romanian and foreign products on the local market.
However, small traders fear that such a measure could lead to shortages and even the removal from the market of traditional Romanian products. They argue that they lack the support schemes that their foreign competitors have, which raises production costs and puts them at a disadvantage.
The project must receive a vote in the governing coalition, and the authorities must determine the period of validity of this capping of traditional products.
“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.
Tags: Ciolacu government preparing price ceiling products added list
