“The conclusion is clear: there have been no profiteers from inflation in the food sector. Neither farmers nor distributors, nor the agri-food industry have taken excessive remuneration in the process” assures the minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire in an interview with the newspaper Le Parisien
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A statement that seems to confirm the conclusions of several parliamentary reports. According to a report by the General Inspectorate of Finance (IGF), “in total, the rise in food prices is the result of a combination of several factors: war in Ukraine, post-Covid recovery, global warming, animal health crisis and various factors of an economic nature (competitiveness of the economy, shortage of labour, etc.). To reach this conclusion, the IGF selected a sample of twelve everyday food products (chicken cutlet, natural yogurt, baguette, etc.) and studied the evolution over time of the gross margin of the various players in the the production line.
+60% for oils, +20% for pastes
The analysis reveals on the one hand “that the agri-food industry has compressed its margins” and on the other hand that “supermarkets have not contributed to raising consumer prices for food products”, thus belying the assumption of inflation suffered only by the final consumer.
Even if inflation is lower in France than in other European countries, the IGF report underlines that in one year, “certain food products have experienced particularly high price increases with, for example, +60% for oils, +22% for flour, +20% for pasta and +16% for poultry.”