The Secretary of Commerce worked 769 fines to food companies and supermarkets for $806,450,000 in the last week due to various types of irregularities regarding compliance with the Fair Prices program, the head of the area, Matías Tombolini, indicated on Tuesday.
“This week we have 769 fines for $806,450,000 for out of stock, lack of signage, use of posters in gondolas for products that are not part of the program, duplication of labeling; and this is somehow one more step in the idea that we cannot bring order to prices and build predictability if we allow abuses,” Tombolini said.
The fines -said the official in dialogue with Radio 10- were deployed both in supermarket chains such as “Día, Carrefour, those of the Cencosud Group (Disco, Vea, Jumbo) and the wholesaler Maxiconsumo”, as well as in food companies such as “Cabrales y Nestle”.
The secretary explained that, after drawing up the record, “the person accused is discharged and then the fine is issued.”
One of the cases was that of a branch of the Jumbo chain located at San Lorenzo 3773, in the San Martín district of Buenos Aires, which was closed last night after a “lightning” operation, carried out jointly between the Secretary of Commerce and the Undersecretary of Consumer Defense and the licensing area of that municipality.
“We received five alerts in a very short period of time; this indicates a severe shortage that was later verified, deploying an operation at night where we found 32 products that were directly out of stock and more than 14 products that were missing” Tombolini recounted.
The secretary clarified that the closure is linked to a violation of municipal ordinance 9,007 “that have to do with an issue related to Firefighters,” and that Commerce is in charge, for its part, of verifying “violations of Law 24,240 on Defense of Consumer”.
The operation was launched after receiving repeated reports of non-compliance in the hypermarket branch, denounced through the Fair Prices mobile application, which triggered an alert that led to initial informal findings and the organization of the aforementioned inspections.
During the verifications, various irregularities were corroborated in relation to compliance with the program, related to shortages of merchandise and stock, mainly in the areas of perfumery, personal care, cleaning, oils, tuna, flour, herbs, and noodles, as well as the absence of signage of the products that are part of the program.
“As a result of the high level of non-compliance of the supermarket in 32 products without stock in addition to some 14 that presented more than 80% shortages, the verifiers proceeded to draw up the corresponding minutes“, reported the Secretary of Commerce in a statement.
In addition to the aforementioned violations, the verifiers detected multiple and repeated breaches of municipal regulations by the mentioned Hiper Jumbo, which led to the immediate closure of the supermarket.
This procedure is framed in the control plan headed by the Secretary of Commerce and is articulated from the joint work between different areas of the State, both at the national, provincial and municipal levels.
The Fair Prices program, in force since November of last year and relaunched at the beginning of this month, sets the prices of almost 2,000 basic necessities for 120 days, through voluntary agreements between the Government and companies that produce and market consumer products.
The products are found in supermarkets, wholesale distributors, and businesses adhering to the program by province or region.
In the same way, the program stipulates an average increase of 3.2% per month on another 50,000 products, until June 30.
