Confederación Española de Comercio (CEC), the Spanish organisation to support local trade, has expressed its concern with the Spanish government's proposal to fix the price of certain goods.
Supermarket representative groups ACES, ANGED and ASEDAS met with Spanish labour minister Yolanda Diaz on 12 September to discuss the proposal, but the CEC did not take part in the negotiations.
Small Businesses At Risk
The CEC published a press release to explain how this decision could affect what it described as an already difficult situation.
"A solution to help the consumer must not affect local trade," president of the CEC, Rafael Torres, said in the press notice.
Small businesses claim they are facing costs that are getting higher, and this situation makes it impossible to compete with prices offered by big conglomerates.
The organisation states that consumers will tend to choose big supermarket chains over small ones because of this reason, and local shops' tighter profits will worsen the situation for them.
'This initiative threatens local trade directly,' the CEC added.
Spain And Agriculture
The decision also affects Spanish agriculture, Asociación Agraria de Jóvenes Agricultores (ASAJA) says, whose uncontrollable and already unsustainable production costs are getting higher.
'Prices are established from the bottom to the top instead of the other way around,' ASAJA declared.
Ignacio Fernandez de Mesa, ASAJA's president, supported CEC's decision to shun the proposal and defined it as an "attack to the agriculture and cattle industries".
Read More: Spanish Retailers Shun Government Proposal To Freeze Basic Goods Prices
© 2022 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Amanda Merchán. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
