site.btaEconomy Ministry Launches Initiative to Ensure Price Stability of Basic Food Products

At the beginning of November, the Economy and Industry Ministry will launch an initiative titled "Affordable for You", which aims to make major food chains set price caps on basic food products before the start of the winter season to protect the most vulnerable consumers. The horizon of the initiative is eight months, Economy and Industry Minister Bogdan Bogdanov said during the first edition of the More than Trade forum, organized by the Association for Modern Trade.

Bogdanov said that food chains representatives had already received an invitation to meet with him and his team at the ministry if they wished to support the initiative. "If we can join forces and rely on market mechanisms, we could achieve even better effects than the imposition of price caps," the Minister addressed the chain stores’ representatives.

The initiative is not mandatory, Bogdanov emphasized. It concerns several groups of goods from the small consumer basket - bread and cereals, meat and meat products, milk and dairy products, eggs, butter and vegetable oils, fruits and vegetables, as well as canned foods. Week by week, each retailer will decide which of these products to cap.

The effect of the initiative will be monitored on a weekly basis by the Commodity Exchange and Wholesale Markets State Commission and the Commission for Consumer Protection, which will submit information to the Ministry. For its part, the Economy Ministry will transmit information to the National Statistical Institute on a weekly basis.

Addressing the forum, Nikolay Valkanov, CEO of the Association of Modern Trade, said that the major food and non-food retail chains will have to invest some BGN 1.3 billion each in sustainability, green transition, digitalization and work environment. He pointed out that one in four companies in Bulgaria's economy is in retail. Every tenth person is employed in trade, Valkanov stressed, adding that the sector has accumulated 6% of Bulgaria's foreign direct investment in the past decade, generating 4.5% of the gross value added in the economy. According to the Institute for Market Economics, modern trade generates about BGN 10 billion of the country's economy, Valkanov explained.