site.btaUPDATED National Care Basket Initiative to Be Presented at Council of Ministers

The national Care Basket initiative, a joint campaign of the government and leading retail chains, will be presented on Monday at the Council of Ministers, the government’s press service announced.

After years of difficult dialogue, conditions are currently being created to arrive at rational solutions that satisfy all parties, Prime Minister Rumen Radev said in May at the meeting at the Council of Ministers with representatives of retail chains, dedicated to the designing and implementing measures to curb price rises, ensure greater transparency in pricing, combat unfair trade practices, and protect Bulgarian producers and food quality. Radev noted that the topic of food prices is of key importance for Bulgarian citizens and emphasized that the government relies on dialogue and good will to find solutions. He said that food prices should be formed through support for local production, strong competition and responsibility to consumers. According to him, excessive markups and unfair trade practices should not be allowed.

The expectations of the government towards the leading retail chains are for a reduction in the prices of essential goods in the range of 15 to 30% and sustainable behaviour and market measures aimed at controlling the prices of essential goods, Deputy Prime Minister and Economy Minister Alexander Pulev told Nova TV on Monday. "We expect to hear today from supermarket chains how they see their social responsibility related to reducing the prices of essential foods. We want to see sustainable socially responsible behaviour, the same they are showing in Western Europe," he added. Pulev said that the state will not control prices, but will coordinate the processes.

The government has reasonable suspicions that the prices in leading retail chains do not correspond to normal commercial practices, Pulev said, adding that there are cases of markups of over 100%. In his words, there is a market defect and therefore the normal market mechanisms for determining prices do not work. The presumption that in modern trade in Bulgaria there is currently a market economy is not correct, since anomalies are observed, he said. The market attitude of modern trade towards the Bulgarian consumer is deformed, he added.

At the end of May, in an interview with Nova TV, Agriculture and Food Minister Plamen Abrovski announced that the Care Basket initiative, part of the first step to lower food prices, will soon be announced. "As a result, prices are expected to drop by more than 10%. Participation by both large supermarket chains and smaller retailers remains voluntary," Abrovski was quoted as saying on the ministry’s website.