Monday December 26, 2022 | 6:20 p.m.
The Fair Prices program, which sets prices for some two thousand essential products through voluntary agreements between the Government and producing and marketing companies, will be in force until December 31, 2023.
In Resolution 1077/2022, published this Monday in the Official Gazette, the term of validity until the end of next year was established, while the regulations to be met by the companies producing the distributed inputs were detailed.
The original resolution with which Fair Prices was created, published on November 10, was limited to companies supplying Mass Consumption Goods, retail and wholesale supermarkets, and did not set the term of validity of the program, beyond establishing that the agreements with each company would run from November 2022 to the end of February 2023.
Mindful of this situation, in the recitals of resolution 1077 it is indicated that “it is necessary to clarify the term of validity of the Fair Prices Program” and empower the Ministry of Commerce to “issue the necessary clarifying regulations”.
Likewise, the companies that produce widespread inputs were incorporated, considered as the “producers of strategic products for the national industry that, as a result of an industrial process, are part of the production chain of a large part of the products of mass consumption, among others”.
Those companies, if they sign the agreement to adhere to the program, “must constantly and uninterruptedly sell the products that they market and that will be detailed at the time of signing the aforementioned agreement” between December 2022 and February 2023.
In the event that it is impossible to supply a product for reasons beyond the control of the companies, “they must give reliable notice of this to the Undersecretary of Policies for the Internal Market” within a period of no more than 72 hours of becoming aware of said impossibility.
In this framework, it will be considered that the companies incurred in infringement when they do not respond in a timely manner to the information requirements or when the breach of any of the provisions of the resolution and the clauses of the agreement they sign is verified.
A few days ago, the Minister of the Economy, Sergio Massa, together with the Secretary of Commerce, Matías Tombolini, signed an agreement with the main suppliers of industrial inputs for the production of food and consumer goods by which these companies will not be able to modify their prices above 3.9% per month on average compared to the month of December.
The objective of this voluntary agreement, which will be maintained until March 2023, is to provide predictability to the cost structure of the companies that participate in the Fair Prices program because one of the fundamental factors in the formation of the price of a product is the costs of the so-called widespread use inputs.
Consumers from all over the country can verify prices and whether a product in the gondola is part of Fair Prices through the program’s app that can be downloaded for both Android and IOS.
The app also allows you to make complaints in case of non-compliance with prices or shortages.
Source: Telam
