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Imagen: wikipedia / FIS
The Fishing Sector requests an urgent meeting with Pedro Sánchez
(SPAIN, 1/19/2023)
Faced with administrative silence, the Fisheries Sector as a whole requests an urgent meeting with Pedro Sánchez in favor of the healthy taxation of fish to dismantle, with scientific and socio-sanitary arguments, the obstacles that prevent the Executive from reducing VAT on all fish products to 4% and protecting Mediterranean diet.
Image: Restaurante Cambados
The most representative organizations of the fishing, aquaculture, processing and marketing of fishery products sector in Spain have asked the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, for an urgent meeting to find out the reasons that have led the Executive not to consider a reduction of the Value Added Tax (VAT) of its products in Royal Decree-Law 20/2022, of December 27, to alleviate the high cost of the shopping cart due to inflation. The sector also offers the president to take advantage of the meeting to jointly resolve any problem that has led the Government to leave fishery products out of the Royal Decree-Law and with the aim of allowing the population to access them taking into account their essential role in a balanced diet.
With the request of this meeting, fishermen, fish farmers, processors and marketers respond to the administrative silence, after their letter from the beginning of January. They also request to have the opportunity to present to Pedro Sánchez the scientific, social and environmental arguments that support his claim to reduce VAT on all fish products in their different presentations to 4%: refrigerated, canned, frozen, smoked, salted, etc. and currently taxed at 10%.
According to the representatives of the sector in their request for the meeting, "really, we do not understand what has led the Executive not to lower VAT on all fishery products, even not temporarily so that families can weather better inflation, but rather as a definitive measure that allows the Government to send a forceful message about the need to consume these products, essential in a healthy diet. Even more - they add -, given the serious decline in its consumption and the unstoppable advance of diseases related to poor nutrition and the enormous cost that this entails for public coffers”.
Photo: Fundación Dieta Mediterránea
The entire fishing chain (fishing, aquaculture, processing and marketing) conveys to the president its firm conviction that "the Government should bet on taxation that promotes healthy eating, as promoted by Europe, and prevents the abandonment of our Atlantic and Mediterranean diets ”.
In the opinion of the sector, the exclusion of fishery products as a basic food subtracts proteins of high nutritional quality from the diet of broad layers of the population, the most disadvantaged in the current inflationary context, and will cause serious health damage in the medium term.
Weighty arguments
Images: Restaurante Cambados
According to data provided by the sector, diseases related to poor nutrition cost the National Health System (SNS) 14,000 million euros per year, which represents almost 20% of total health spending. Faced with these figures, and according to the calculations of the sector, the reduction in VAT on fishery products that is requested would mean less than 500 million in revenue reduction for the State.
The sector, as already stated in its previous letter, does not understand that the Executive forgets its social character and misses the opportunity to support the consumption of essential products for health, even more so, in the current situation with vulnerable population layers. In Spanish households, fish consumption has decreased by 25% since 2008.
There have been numerous occasions on which the signatory organizations have requested the Government to reduce VAT on all fish products, as well as the need to promote a varied, balanced diet, and thus join the healthy taxation that is already being talked about in Europe. . In these requests they have provided data on the tax rate in other European countries, in which they are taxed at 0% or 5%, and offered data on the socio-sanitary situation: the increase in pathologies related to poor nutrition, such as obesity and overweight (Spain is the fourth country in the European Union with the highest percentage of obese children), and cardiovascular diseases –which generate an annual expenditure of some 8,000 million euros to the SNS and are the leading cause of mortality in our country–, as well as with the progressive abandonment of the healthy Mediterranean diet and the Atlantic diet.
The request for a meeting is signed by ANFACO-CECOPESCA, the Spanish Aquaculture Business Association (APROMAR), the Shipowners' Cooperative of the Port of Vigo (ARVI), the Spanish Fisheries Confederation (CEPESCA), the Spanish Association of Wholesalers, Importers, Transformers and Exporters of Fishing and Aquaculture Products (CONXEMAR), the National Federation of Provincial Associations of Retail Entrepreneurs of Frozen Fish and Products (FEDEPESCA), the National Federation of Fish Wholesalers (FENAMAR) and the National Federation of Fishermen's Associations (FNCP).
Source: BDI Comunicación
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