Food prices have been climbing sharply throughout the European Union. In Spain they registered a 16.6% year-on-year increase in February, and experts believe that food inflation has yet to peak. ($1 = 0.9098 euros) (Reporting by Belén Carreño, editing by Andrei Khalip and John Stonestreet)
MADRID, April 12 (Reuters) - Spain's leading supermarket
chain, Mercadona, will lower the prices of at least 500 basic
food products, it said on Wednesday, amid a cost of living
crisis that had prompted the government to seek concessions from
retailers.
The announcement comes a few weeks after Mercadona president
and majority owner Juan Roig said his company, whose market
share is nearly 26%, had had to raise prices "by a huge amount"
to maintain margins through the food production chain.
The company said in a statement on Wednesday that after
seeing that input costs were slowly easing, it decided to make
price cuts that it expects will save 150 euros ($165) on average
for customers this year.
The cheaper products include fresh fish, some cheeses and
yoghurts, dried fruit, oil and household cleaning products, it
said.
French supermarket chain Carrefour launched a
campaign in September offering consumers a basket of 30 basic
goods for 30 euros, after Labour Minister Yolanda Diaz said she
was seeking agreements with supermarkets to help impoverished
families continue to eat healthily.
Although her proposal was met with scepticism from business
groups and opposition politicians who viewed it as an attempt to
regulate prices, Basque Country-based cooperative Eroski
followed suit in March, lowering the prices of basic food
products.
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