From 1 January reduced VAT rate to 5% for some baby products (nappies, milk and car seats)
The Minister of Enterprise and Made in Italy, Adolfo Urso, has given a mandate to the Guarantor for price surveillance to convene a meeting of the new Commission for rapid alert on the high prices of childhood products as soon as possible. This was announced by Mimit recalling that with the budget law for 2023 the Government has foreseen – from 1 January last – the reduction of the VAT rate to 5% for some products for children. In particular, diapers, milk and car seats for children.
The Guarantor for price surveillance has, since the beginning and at the disposal of Minister Urso, carried out monthly monitoring aimed at estimating, also territorially, the current variation in consumer prices of products subject to the new rate, compared to the month of December 2022 (before, therefore, its introduction). The monitoring revealed, Mimit reports, that in the first 3 months of application of the reduced rates, until last March, the effects of the maneuver do not appear to be entirely transferred to the benefit of the consumer: in some cases, in fact, even taking into account that the measure of the intervention is part of a phase characterized by inflation that is still present (food, home and personal care products show an overall increase of +3% between December 2022 and March 2023), it is observed a price reduction equal to only 50% of the expected one.
In the light of the data analyzed so far, therefore, Minister Urso has mandated the Guarantor for price surveillance to convene as soon as possible a meeting of the new Rapid Alert Commission, set up with the recent Transparency Decree, to examine in depth the reasons underlying the price dynamics of the products concerned, in order to carry out the necessary interventions. The offices supporting the Guarantor estimate, by processing the provincial consumer price indices of Istat, a national variation between the months of March and December equal to: open diaper: -4.9%, diaper pants: -2.9 %, starting infant milk: -1.3%, growing infant milk: -2.6%, continuation infant milk: -1.4%, car seat for children: -2%.
Source-www.adnkronos.com