Fears move will lead to predatory pricing strategies

ISME, the representative body of small business yesterday roundly condemned the Government’s decision to rescind the Groceries Order that bans below cost selling.

The move paved the way for “predatory pricing strategies” and would hit small grocers and local suppliers hard, it said.

Chief executive, Mark Fielding, said the “change will not lead to a price reduction of grocery products.”

If there was going to be any movement in prices “it is upwards when the multiples, who control over 50% of the market, decide to expand their burgeoning empires at the expense of local indigenous businesses”, he warned.

With reference to the increased powers being extended to the Competition Authority under the Competition Act, Mr Fielding derided that decision as “a joke.”

He added: “The notion that the Competition Authority will protect the small grocer and small supplier against predatory practices is a fanciful and a glib argument, full of good intent but ultimately a sham”, he said.

RGDATA, which lobbied hard against the lifting of the ban welcomed the decision by the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Micheál Martin, to strengthen the Competition Act that aims to ban predatory and abusive behaviour in the retail grocery trade.

RGDATA, the group which represents the independent Irish retail sector, said it was pleased the Minister had accepted that existing competition legislation was both inadequate and ineffective and needed to be amended if the Groceries Order was to be repealed.

Tara Buckley, RGDATA director general, said the decision to strengthen the Competition Act to outlaw predatory pricing, hello money and other abusive practices was both sensible and necessary given the imminent repeal of the Groceries Order.

Ann Fitzgerald, chair of the National Consumer Agency said the NCA welcomed the decision by Government to stick to its convictions “in the face of intense lobbying by vested interests for the Order’s retention”.

It was a “triumph” and marked a turning point in how the interests of Irish consumers were going to be addressed in the future, she said.