Image: APA/EVA MANHART
In the future, supermarkets of a certain size will be required to make certain sales prices more easily accessible for these portals and for scientific institutions, Kocher explained to journalists in Vienna on Friday. However, there will be no government food price calculator.
The draft law should be available in the next few weeks. In principle, the project has been agreed with the green coalition partner, but details still need to be clarified, said Kocher. The planned law is expected to come before parliament by the end of the year.
“No need”
However, there will be no food price calculator from the state, as was recently put forward. In mid-May, Kocher declared that the introduction of a food price calculator for basic foods in supermarkets and online retail should be implemented “as quickly as possible”. In mid-July, Kocher announced a proposal for this by the fall. In any case, the tool must “benefit consumers, it must be simple and of course it must also be designed in such a way that it provides the right information at all times,” said the Economics Minister in an APA interview in July. Given the number of private food price calculators, Kocher no longer sees a need for an “official offer”. They want to support them.
With the project, Kocher is following the recommendations of the Federal Competition Authority (BWB). After surveying the operators of heissepreise.io, preismonitor.at, preisrunter.at, supermarket.at and Teuerungsportal.at, the competition watchdogs came to the conclusion that the platforms could improve transparency in food retail for consumers.
Daily purchases are very expensive
“Price comparison platforms offer consumers a tool to compare prices better and more quickly,” said BWB interim boss Natalie Harsdorf-Borsch at a joint press conference with Kocher in Vienna. A practical example from Israel shows that such portals have demonstrably reduced prices by an average of 4 to 5 percent.
However, in the BWB’s opinion, the improvement in price transparency should only have an effect on the customer side; simpler coordination or adjustment of food retailers’ prices should be avoided. Price comparison platforms should also not be limited to just a few products, but ideally also make shopping baskets comparable and display all price segments, not just discount products.
The data that food retailers should make available more easily in the future would have to include, among other things, the EAN barcode, product name, origin, brand and price. Kocher also sees quality information as essential so that high-quality products do not have any disadvantages.
Daily shopping in the supermarket has become significantly more expensive. Prices for food and non-alcoholic beverages rose by an average of 10.5 percent year-on-year in July, significantly higher than overall inflation of 7.0 percent.
Due to price developments in the food industry, the BWB launched a large-scale investigation last fall. The authority plans to publish the results at the end of October. The competition watchdogs investigate whether there are competition problems in certain product areas that lead to higher prices and where the price increases went.
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