The National Branch Chamber "Fruit and Vegetables" insists on a full analysis of the food chain after signals of pressure from retail chains on producers to reduce the prices of their products by 15%. This was said in "The Day Begins" on BNT by the Chairman of the Chamber's Management Board, Tsvetan Tsekov. The CPC has already started an investigation into the case.
Tsvetan Tsekov, Chairman of the Board of the National Branch Chamber "Fruits and Vegetables": "Information about pressure on agricultural producers by retail chains has been provided to the Minister of Agriculture and the Commission for the Protection of Competition, and the situation has yet to be established."
According to Tsekov, this is a reduction in vegetable prices by exactly 15%, just after the cabinet announced the "Basket with Care" campaign, the aim of which is to change the prices of Bulgarian fruits and vegetables in the chains by 15%. In fact, the problem is not new:
Tsvetan Tsekov, Chairman of the Board of the National Branch Chamber "Fruits and Vegetables": "Agricultural producers who produce and who sell their products through retail chains are always subject to constant pressure to reduce prices. In many cases, it is sold below cost. So it is good to do a new survey of the retail chains, how and in what way they function. And it is no coincidence, for us it is extremely important, the legal changes that are currently underway in the Law on Protection of Competition and the Law on Consumer Protection, which were so marked 33 unfair practices that will be prohibited, which essentially created an extremely serious problem for us as producers who sell and put us in an extremely disadvantaged position. In fact, a new survey should be done of the effect of retail chains on agricultural production and on those who sell their agricultural produce, how much they have managed to survive as a result of their work now."
The problem is also that the affected producers do not signal in such situations:
"These are our colleagues who are tomato producers, by the way. There are other colleagues who are extremely worried and do not want to be enlightened, because they will be thrown out like that, and they rely on trade with retail chains.
Do they not trust the state to protect them?
Well, maybe this is some kind of accumulation as a result of the last 30 years, in which in fact, despite the numerous signals that we have submitted, there was no reaction at all."
And he insisted on checking the influence of retail chains on agriculture in our country:
"They are serious entities, they hold two-thirds of the market, so that they can really overcome the negative and bad practices that they offered and to give maximum opportunity to Bulgarian agriculture to offer its production at a decent price, so that we can sell and not see such 100-200% markups, because it is happening now. And realistically, on the one hand, the retail chains have huge markups, on the other hand, they pressure us to lower prices. We deliver them at a price that makes a profit, above cost. But when we work with the retail chains, many times when they do their promotions, they have this practice where we have to reduce the price and in many cases we sell at cost, and sometimes even below cost, in order to continue working with them."