Madrid (EFE).- Unidas Podemos has proposed a 14.4% discount on the price of a basic food basket, which would make it possible to lower prices to the level they were in February 2022, when the war in Ukraine broke out.
According to sources from Podemos, it is proposed to use the same model that was applied to fuel: a bonus that would be effective when paying at the cash register and that would appear on the ticket.
The initiative is launched after the PSOE’s refusal to cap prices, as the formation raised a month ago, and in view of the increase in food prices at a higher rate than the CPI, argues the purple formation.
He calculates that the measure would have a notably greater impact on low-income households, which are those that allocate a greater part of their income to food, and would reduce the price of products such as milk, oil, eggs, meat, fish, fruit or bread.
In addition, it proposes that the Food Information and Control Agency monitor prices on a weekly basis, with special attention to large stores, and impose fines if companies increase their profit margins. In case of repeated infringement, the consideration would become similar to that of a tax offence.
Finally, and in the medium term, it is requested to improve the Food Chain Law and establish a Price Regulation and Control Commission, in order to improve transparency and prepare recommendations to regulate prices in strategic sectors.
Díaz defends that “we must continue acting” to lower the price of food
The second vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, defended this Thursday that “we must continue acting” to lower the price of the shopping basket after United We Can have proposed a 14.4% discount on a basic basket of food.
In statements to the media in the halls of Congress, Díaz stressed that “steps must be taken” because for families it is “mission impossible (…) to guarantee health and healthy food”, while distribution companies and large corporations ” they have business margins that are more than relevant”.
Díaz thus urges the adoption of new measures shortly after the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, has defended, when asked about the initiative of United We Can but without specifically referring to it, that the proposals that come out of the Government cannot be ” simply for political debate”, but “they have to be viable”.
Díaz has insisted that there are “two very important problems on which we are not acting or we intervene insufficiently”, which are mortgages and rents and the shopping basket, for which he has urged measures to be taken because “when the Government of Spain acts, of course prices drop”.
Montero, on the other hand, has urged the measures already adopted to be allowed to act, such as the VAT reduction for basic foods, and has recalled that the food chain observatory meets on Monday.