The CEO of Insular de Aguas de Lanzarote (INALSA), Mario Pérez, announced this Monday that in the first half of September the Board of Directors that he chairs will assess and approve an important offer from a company in Lanzarote to take over the commercialization and sale of all Aguas Chafariz production.
The information was advanced first thing in the morning on the radio program Buenos Días Lanzarote, where they were talking precisely about the failure of the company that finally had to abandon the idea of taking over the brand that Inalsa controls. The excuse was none other than to expose the increase that has been perceived in recent months in the price of bottled water on the Island, which costs more since Chafariz stopped being on the market again. In fact, no one doubted that the presence of water produced and bottled by the public company in Lanzarote served as a stabilizer of prices and as a controller of the market, in such a way that private competition had no choice but to keep their products low for a long time.
Specifically, Pérez said that "soon we will have some good news on this matter, because changes are going to occur", adding, in reference to the numerous water cuts that have occurred during the summer period, that "it is not bad that this is the case after the summer we have had".
The CEO of the public company recalled that the distribution and sale of Chafariz had been put out to tender on three occasions, three occasions in which the tender was unsuccessful, which led to a change of strategy. Now what has been done is to open a negotiating process with different companies on the Island to prevent the brand that effectively puts a stop to the expansionist desires of the free market from disappearing. "We believe that in the first half of September, when the Board of Directors of Inalsa meets for the first time, we will be in a position to advance some news because we have a sensible, serious and rigorous offer from local businessmen who want to take over the production and distribution of Aguas Chafariz", he detailed.
In this way, he pointed out that the approach that has been made at all times from Inalsa is that a business is not made with bottled water but that a "regulator" of the rest of the waters is sought. "What we wanted to avoid above all were the enormous losses that were occurring, which even reached one hundred million pesetas", he stressed, insisting that it is an issue that will bring some peace to a place that needs it.
Mario Pérez, as leader of Coalición Canaria (CC) and as second vice-president of the Cabildo, expressed his concern about the situation of prices not only of water but also of the rest of the products, which has placed Lanzarote on the island that, together with La Gomera, has the most expensive shopping basket. "We are finding month after month that we are the island with the most expensive basic consumer basket in the Canary Islands, and that should make us reflect on the very high dependence we have on the outside and on the evolution that transport is having in the Archipelago", he finally remarked.
