Watchdog decides not to publish price survey

THE NATIONAL Consumer Agency (NCA) has withdrawn a price survey, scheduled for publication today, following last week's announcement from Tesco that it was reducing prices across its grocery range.

NCA chief executive Ann Fitzgerald said that to publish the study as it stood would risk misleading people about supermarket prices.

Last week Tesco Ireland launched what it said was a €100 million price-cutting campaign aimed at stopping its customers switching to discount retailers Aldi and Lidl. The campaign has seen 1,000 products bundled together under a Tesco Cash Saver range.

Ms Fitzgerald, however, questioned the significance of the Tesco move. "We are not calling it a price war and we are monitoring the situation to see if they have genuinely reduced their prices or have simply repositioned certain products in more prominent places in their supermarkets to create the impression prices are falling," she said.

She said the agency had tracked Tesco's mid-priced and value ranges in recent weeks and found that between June 28th and Tuesday of this week, just nine items out of a basket of 99 products had fallen in price.

An Irish Timessurvey also discovered that prices had fallen in only two of 13 monitored product categories.

Ms Fitzgerald asked: "Are they [Tesco] just moving certain products into a more prominent position in their stores? If this is a real price war then where are Aldi, Lidl and Dunnes? Why have they not responded?"

However, Tesco Ireland said the saver range included "over 1,000 everyday products at permanently low prices and a commitment that these prices won't be beaten by anyone". It said up to 500 of the products were new to its stores here and added that it had also cut the price of 3,000 grocery products and planned a further 2,000 price cuts in the coming months.

In recent months, the agency has carried out a number of price surveys showing substantial gaps between prices in the main four supermarkets, Tesco, Superquinn, Dunnes and Supervalu, and the discounters Aldi and Lidl.

Superquinn executive chairman Simon Burke has dismissed the surveys as "imbalanced and misguided" and said they did not take into account food quality and food sourcing.

Ms Fitzgerald rejected the criticism and said the supermarkets were primarily concerned with maintaining the status quo.