At the beginning of October this year, a supplementary agreement regarding the low-price food basket is planned to be signed, including expanding the range of products included in it, said Minister of Economics Viktor Valainis in an interview with Latvian Television's (LTV) program "Morning Panorama," reports LETA.
"At the beginning of October, we will sign a new supplementary agreement with all involved parties," said Valainis, adding that an agreement has been reached to include more products in the low-price food basket.
The minister also noted that the products included in the low-price basket should be more visible in stores. "If we are going with these low-price categories, they should be sufficiently well visible," emphasized Valainis, noting that retailers have confirmed their willingness to accommodate this issue.
Valainis also reminded that the value-added tax (VAT) rate for certain food products will be reduced in Latvia in the middle of this year.
"There will also be a supplementary agreement on how the VAT reduction will take place, what the retailer will take on, what the producer will take on, what the intermediaries and logistics companies will take on," said the minister, adding that this process will be monitored.
As previously reported by LETA, a reduced VAT rate of 12% will be established for some staple food products, including flour, milk, poultry products, and fresh eggs, starting from the middle of this year. The amendments were adopted to mitigate the impact of rising food prices on the welfare of residents.
It was also reported that a memorandum on reducing food prices was signed in May 2025. The memorandum was signed by the Minister of Economics, the Latvian Association of Food Traders, the Latvian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Central Union of Latvian Dairy Farmers, the Federation of Food Industry Enterprises of Latvia, the Council for Cooperation of Agricultural Organizations, the Farmers' Saeima society, and other partners. The memorandum provides for the introduction of a low-price food basket, the implementation of a price comparison tool, and the promotion of increasing the share of locally produced goods in stores.
The memorandum stipulates the inclusion of at least one product from each of the ten main food categories in the low-price food basket. These categories include bread, milk, cheese, cottage cheese, butter, sour cream, yogurt, buttermilk, fresh vegetables and fruits, pork, poultry, beef and veal, sheep and goat meat, fresh fish, eggs, flour and other grains, as well as vegetable oils.
At the same time, the Consumer Rights Protection Centre (CRPC), monitoring the implementation of the memorandum on food prices and the contents of the low-price basket, concluded in February of this year that part of the product categories stipulated in the memorandum is often missing from the low-price food baskets in Latvia.
Monitoring over a 32-week period showed that in supermarket chains, an average of seven out of ten stipulated categories are represented in the low-price baskets. This figure has remained unchanged for a long time and, according to the CRPC, is insufficient. The number of represented categories in various retail chains varies from four to nine, depending on the retailer's assortment.
In turn, retailers reported to LETA that due to seasonality and the assortment of specific stores, they cannot regularly ensure the availability of all product categories stipulated in the memorandum that are to be included in the low-price basket.
