No Te Duermas spoke with Orlando Benavidez from the food industry about market prices.
By Ariel Fassio
arielfassio@gmail.com
At the beginning of the interview, Benavidez said that “Food is a commodity. Although the prices are for commodities, because they cost the same, here you don’t have to pay for the transport, the dispute, you have it here. Unless there is a drought, when there was little.”
Regarding the food prices reported by INDEC, Orlando said that “I think it is not true, I personally do. Because it is always touched. What happens is that the price is distorted. You go to any market now and you have two for one. Some offer. They take the price from there. They take it from the offer. I am convinced of that. Because we have a 40% decrease, but the prices have not gone down. For example, the same 20%, more or less, is a lot of money. And we do one at 40%, another at 50% discount, and the money comes in and the number is less. It is not explained.”
“The businessmen continue to earn, of course. The other day I was in the central market because I went to see a company that we have and it disconcerted me. I mean, in that vegetable warehouse, which is a terrible mess, there was no one, very little, everyone looking at each other, you see. It doesn’t go down anyway. What I saw is that it doesn’t go down. Sometimes you find some offer that is better than the central market and you don’t understand.
The shopping mall is not well regulated. You find a large greengrocer, but there they sell you a bag of potatoes for 6,000 pesos, 7,000 pesos. And in the market it is at 10. I mean, there are merchants who are buying directly from the producer, something is happening,” he added.
Producers and imports
“La Plata, Varela, Pilar. They are all Bolivian producers. They set the price for vegetables. That is why all the greengrocers are Bolivian, because they get the price from the producer to the consumer directly. It is cheaper, but it is still expensive. Because they compare prices. They all sell the same. In other words, when they want to, they lower it, when they want to, they raise it. They have been managing the market for a long time. But a long time,” he added.
“Today, nothing is imported. Because it has a characteristic, it has to be a guy who understands a lot about food, about cookies, whoever imports. Because there are many times. For example, Baduco brings bread from Brazil. But between the time it leaves the port in Brazil, it loses two days, the transport takes two more days, four. When it enters the port, it has ten days left. The market has it there, it has no warehouse, it has nothing to distribute, it has nothing. So it stays. When it reaches the market, it arrives with four days. People look at it and it is useless,” he explained.
“The thing about cookies is that you can fill a container with cookies, but since they have half a kilo and the cookies are big, you can bring a million cookies, but that doesn’t add up. From Europe to here or from wherever. It doesn’t add up. Consumption fell in the first brands. You have PepsiCo that sells potato chips, all that fell a bit. You have Bimbo that sells bread, you have Terrabusi that sells cookies, but then you have other variables, like El Trio for example. Don Satur sells what he makes. El Trio sells what he makes.”
“It’s a good product or it’s a mediocre product, but in the long run you get used to it. That’s why Manaos got involved. The first thing was Manaos and Coca-Cola and you said, no way. And then you get used to the taste, and like everything.
For example, someone who drinks chocolate doesn’t drink Sindor. You will see that Sindor in three months in a market two for one. At four thousand pesos. Because they expire. And because they don’t sell it,” he commented
In some cases, profiteering plays a role
“What a pizza costs, for example. Twenty thousand, fifteen thousand pesos. The best mozzarella costs ten thousand pesos a kilo. The pizza has two hundred and fifty grams. That is, you make four pizzas. There you have the value of the mozzarella at two thousand five hundred pesos. The kilo of flour costs eight hundred pesos. That is, you get four too. There you have two hundred more bucks. Let’s add up, two seven hundred. The tomato three hundred pesos. You have three thousand pesos. A couple of olives, which in some places they don’t sell anymore. You have three thousand two hundred, three thousand five hundred pesos. The gas, the electricity. It can cost you three thousand five hundred bucks. Now you can’t sell a pizza for fifteen thousand pesos. “It’s very expensive. I always had a pizzeria, I sell one hundred and seventy pizzas a week. I sell it for eight thousand pesos. I’m making four thousand percent. This is the issue of those who take advantage,” Benavidez concluded, criticizing the price gougers.
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