Agriculture Minister Florin Barbu proposes extending Romania’s commercial-markup cap — now limited to basic foods — to all food products on supermarket shelves. It is a policy intention under discussion, not an ordinance already adopted, and any price effect depends on a Cabinet decision.

Barbu said Romania “runs on consumption” and that weaker purchasing power hits the food industry: processing plants running below capacity and, on figures he cited, tens of thousands of unemployed in industry. He tied those effects to fiscal policy and to the future of the markup-cap mechanism.

He asked the Competition Council, ANAF and the National Institute of Statistics for a report to the Government on the 2023 cap’s results, as a basis for keeping or widening it. He cited a comparison of food inflation before and after the measure, which he presents as proof that the mechanism “worked.”

The current scheme under GEO 67/2023 covers 17 basic foods and expires on 31 December 2026 after successive extensions. Prime Minister Luca Niculescu said on 7 November in Cernavodă that Barbu’s proposal will be weighed with the 2027 budget draft alongside other ministers’ ideas — a clear signal that there is still no official go-ahead for a blanket cap.

Separately, Barbu also called for cutting VAT on food “at least to 9%, as before,” criticizing the current 11% rate. Any tax change still runs through the Finance Ministry and budget arithmetic, not a ministerial quote alone.

The minister added that a cap could also cover imported foods, based on the purchase invoice plus costs, and criticized markup practices he considers abusive. He spoke of the state’s “weakness” and “complicity” in enforcement without naming concrete cases.

In short: the public debate is about a possible price relief through broader markup rules and, maybe, lower VAT; for now it remains a proposal on the Cabinet’s table, with a decision horizon tied to the 2027 budget and to the fate of the cap that ends in late 2026.

Source consulted: Government weighs a measure that could lower food prices — BZI