The president of Mercadona, Juan Roig, assured this Tuesday that the impact of the Middle East conflict on prices It will depend on the cost of the raw materials and not the company. “If raw materials go up or down, we go up or down,” he stated, while clarifying that, for the moment, no supplier has raised their prices and, therefore, neither have they (in fact, they even currently have some discounts).
Despite this, Roig has made it clear that “the future is uncertain” and that no one could have imagined the pandemic, the war in Ukraine or now that in Iran. “Entrepreneurs are someone who rides a surfboard and waves come, and what we have to do is adapt,” he said during the presentation of the company’s results, in statements reported by Europa Press.
Petition to the Government for zero VAT: “it would be very good”
To the question of whether in the current context measures such as zero VAT should be implemented for some basic foods (as happened in the war in Ukraine), Juan Rog has indicated that “it would be very good”: “We would be delighted with zero VAT, we would love it if tomorrow both the Spanish and Portuguese Governments decreed zero VAT on food, it would be very good but it does not depend on us.”
Returning to the possible price increase, he added that the increase in oil price “It affects all transportation and packaging” and is transferred to “many other things.” “The day before yesterday oil rose a lot, the one who is there in the United States said that it was already fixed… We cannot predict the future, what we are going to do is face it,” he added.
“We depend on raw materials and we are influenced by whatever happens in the world”
The president of Mercadona has reiterated that companies do not determine the cost of raw materials and that it is this aspect that will determine whether or not there is an increase in prices: “We do not increase or decrease, we cannot influence the price of raw materials.”
“What all salespeople and all distributors want most is to lower prices, no one is happy raising prices, but we depend on raw materials and we are influenced by whatever happens in the world,” he stated in the same terms.