Guadalajara, Jalisco. The Council for Agricultural and Agroindustrial Development of Jalisco (CDAAJ), the main agri-food producer in the country, rejected a possible price control of the products of the basic basket, as part of the anti-inflationary plan that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador will announce this week.
Andrés Canales, president of the CDAAJ, affirmed that setting a price cap on food products will mainly affect small farmers in the countryside, already negatively impacted by the rise in most of their inputs.
“We are facing very complicated times, mainly derived from the prices that fertilizers and all the inputs for both agricultural and livestock production now have; grain prices have shot up 300%,” he commented.
According to the president of the CDAAJ, even with the prices of food products that are currently available, the most affected are the small producers for whom it is no longer profitable to continue in this activity due to the rise in inputs.
“I see this proposal as very complicated, since the prices that we currently have are very punished for products, such as milk, for example, which are issues that concern us a lot in the sector and we believe that the limitation in prices comes, in some cases, to give a very negative panorama for the producers”, said Canales Leaño.
The president of the Guadalajara Chamber of Commerce, Raúl Uranga, affirmed that price control is a measure that showed its failure in the 1970s, and anticipated that, if this inflationary policy is approved, it will be detrimental to both companies and for the end consumer. “Companies are affected, company collaborators are affected but, in the end, the main affected is the consumer.”