By: Pramod Thomas
SUPERMARKET chain Asda has said that it will make its cheapest food ranges more widely available across all 581 food stores and online, according to a media report.
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Last month, Monroe pointed out that some shoppers were in effect facing triple-digit inflation because they were no longer able to buy products from these ranges and had to buy more expensive basics.
She pointed out that in some cases customers face a price hike of 344 per cent on rice due to the unavailability of cheaper essentials.
Asda said 150 value-range products were stocked in 300 stores currently, and by 1 March it would introduce all 200 of them across its outlets.
This week it increased the number available online by 100 to 187, and it will add more by the end of the month.
“We want to help our customers’ budgets stretch further and have taken onboard the comments about the availability of our Smart Price range made by Jack Monroe. We are taking steps to put our full Smart Price and Farm Stores ranges in store and online to make these products as accessible as possible,” Meg Farren, Asda’s chief customer officer, was quoted as saying by the Guardian.
Monroe raised concerns that headline inflation figures do not capture the impact on those with the least money to spend.
Following her campaign, the Office for National Statistics said it accepted that every person had their own inflation rate and it would do more to capture the impact of price increases on different income groups, the report further said.