PARIS (Reuters) – Companies in the agri-food industry have agreed to reopen price negotiations with supermarkets earlier than expected, Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Wednesday that the talks will “break the inflationary spiral”.

“There will be early renegotiations on the food industry,” said Bruno Le Maire during a trip to Loiret, after a meeting in Bercy with representatives of the sector.

“It means that prices will be renegotiated downwards and in advance, so we can break the inflationary spiral,” he added.

Under the terms of the law, manufacturers and distributors negotiate prices once a year.

After the last negotiations, the supermarket chains had nevertheless accepted in March at the request of the government to reduce their margins for three months on a selection of products of their choice in order to contain the rise in the prices of everyday consumer goods.

Bruno Le Maire then specified that a point would be made in June and that manufacturers would be asked to renegotiate their prices with large retailers.

Suspecting players in the agri-food sector of not playing the game, the Minister of the Economy threatened them last Thursday to resort to taxes to recover any “undue margins” if they did not agree to renegotiate their prices with large distribution.

“No one is running away from their responsibilities,” Richard Panquiault, president of the Consumer Business Liaison Institute (Ilec), one of the representatives of the agri-food sector, told journalists on Wednesday in front of Bercy. “What we are saying today is that we are not going to hide behind the law to say ‘no sir, I will not come to discuss’.”

Inflation over one year in France continued to accelerate in April, to 5.9% against 5.7% in March. Food prices jumped 15.9% year on year in March, according to the latest available data.

(Report Leigh Thomas, written by Bertrand Boucey, edited by Blandine Hénault and Kate Entringer)

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