Hungarian govt to instruct big grocery chains to offer discounts
In order to lower prices, the government will instruct major grocery chains to offer price discounts, government spokesperson Alexandra Szentkirályi said at a regular press briefing on Thursday.
Szentkirályi said the improvement in the inflation data was already visible thanks to the government’s measures, but the cabinet decided to introduce a new tool based on Greek and French examples, from July 1 at the latest.
The regulation will classify basic foodstuffs into 20 categories such as poultry, cheese, bread, baked goods, vegetables, fruit and cold cuts, she said. And the retail outlets affected will have to offer a product of their choice in all categories at least 10 percent cheaper than the price in effect in the 30 days preceding the special offer, she added.
Products must be selected for the special offers every week in order to ensure that the possibility of purchasing at a discount covers a wide range of products, Szentkiralyi said.
The discounts cannot apply to price-capped products, she added.
Source: MTI
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3 Comments
Here is a better option, why won’t you lower the VAT?
You can start with basic stuff like WATER!
I’m not a fan of government interference in the operation of the free market, but I’d rather have this than “eat ze bugs” as Uncle Klaus wants us to. However, I hope the stores are not going to be playing games here, such as jack up the price of a commodity in May 20% and then “reduce” it by 10% in June. They do that kind of B.S. regularly!
We can’t lower Europe’s highest VAT rate – the Hungarian people have to fund Europe’s lowest corporate tax rate -https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-hungary.pdf
Weird to again read the claim that price controls lower inflation. Our Politicians oversaw Hungary have the highest inflation figures in the European Union (“it wasn’t us!”), in part due to the stubborn adherence to price controls when most economists, central bankers (including Mr. Matolcsy), etc. clearly state price controls FUELS inflation – https://www.econlib.org/library/columns/y2022/candelapricecontrols.html – with sources
Lastly – supermarkets hardly have the stellar margins to “eat” the loss caused by having to sell goods at or below cost – they will need to balance the “basket” and margins on other goods to survive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymxG4wOP7fk . @MichaelSteiner – I believe these are the (justifiable) actions we’re likely to see from the supermarkets, not gaming the prices of the goods impacted by price caps? If selling below cost, I’d just pull them from the shelves and have people deal with it. Or just ship quantities of goods shipped to stores in a volume based on some objectifiable benchmark – take that loss. please the Politicians and basta.