Strong defense of the president of the CEOE, Antonio Garamendi, from the distribution sector. While the Government, through the ministers Yolanda Díaz and Alberto Garzón, is trying to reach an agreement with the large supermarkets so that they offer a shopping basket with healthy staple foods at a reduced price, the businessmen are closing ranks to “put in value to the sector” and publicly embrace the large company and its top executives. In this defense, Garamendi also included Ana Botín, president of Banco Santander, and Ignacio Galán, president of Iberdrola.
The president of the CEOE and candidate for re-election yesterday wanted to take advantage of the assembly of the National Association of Large Distribution Companies (Anged) to attack the initiative promoted by the second vice president and Minister of Labor Yolanda Díaz and the Minister of Consumption Alberto Garzón which seeks to “cap the prices of basic foods such as bread, milk or eggs.” Relations between employers and the Ministry of Labor are not going through their best moment. “It seems unbelievable that a member of the government promotes a cartel,” said the president of the businessmen, addressing the ministers of Labor and Consumption. Garamendi insisted on his qualification of the plan as “Soviet programming” before emphasizing that if the distributors were to talk about prices they would have “the Police at the door”.
Garamendi accused the Executive of trying to “damage the image” of companies in the distribution sector. For the Basque businessman, it rains on wet. He drew attention to “the point that two leaders of this country with names and surnames have been accused”, he stated in reference to the words of Pedro Sánchez about Botín and Galán when he said that, if they complained, the Government was going for good road. “It seems very dangerous to me,” he defended forcefully. Distribution was and is an essential sector for Garamendi: “Thanks to you, we Spaniards did not realize that the country was at a standstill.”
The large distributors grouped in Anged refuse to enter into negotiations with Díaz and Garzón for a healthy shopping basket, as proposed by the Government. Employer sources indicate that they are attending the meetings with the ministerial teams, but that the positions on the diagnosis of the situation are very different.
The president of Anged, Alfonso Merry del Val, for his part, asked the Government “to be more sensitive to the difficult situation facing businessmen” and called for urgent measures to contain inflation, which “is the worst enemy of society because it preys on business margins and cuts household income”.
Merry del Val once again demanded to alleviate the taxation of families with specific reductions in VAT on essential products and the deflation of personal income tax, which governments such as the Community of Madrid, Andalusia, the Basque Country and Murcia have already announced. The employers also demand solutions to reduce the energy bill of companies. Specifically, a legislative framework similar to that of the electro-intensive industry to access energy in better conditions.
The distribution, according to the employer’s report for 2021, employs 234,857 people in Spain, 65.6% of them women. With 3.2 million daily customers, the sector calculates that last year it generated 4,000 million in tax revenue for the State and 6,750 million in salaries and contributions.
