This Wednesday, the plenary session of the Chamber of Deputies approved in general and in particular the Opinion with Draft Decree by which various provisions of the Law for the Promotion of Reading and Books are amended and added, which groups together a dozen initiatives proposed by deputies of different parliamentary groups, so this must return to the Senate, the chamber of origin.
Of these provisions, the proposed reform of article 26 of said law stands out in favor of the extension to 36 months (instead of 18, as is current) of the single price in newly published or imported books, with the exception of old, used copies , discontinued, exhausted or handmade.
Likewise, in article 27 of the same, a paragraph is added that designates the Federal Commission for Economic Competition (Cofece) and the Federal Consumer Prosecutor’s Office (Profeco) as responsible for preventing, investigating and sanctioning practices that affect the functioning of the market of the book stipulated in the law, that is, including what concerns the single price of the book.
“These provisions will help prevent small bookstores from closing down without interfering with the development of the industry. It is vitally important to achieve fair conditions of competition between small traders and large companies. If this reform is approved, we will affect a market in which during the last decade there has been no price competition, ”said Deputy Rocío Barrera Badillo, who proposed the addition in Article 27.
For her part, the president of the Education Commission, Adela Piña Bernal, pointed out that this opinion, in addition to the aforementioned zero rate, includes modifications to “promote reading in general, but also in a particular way among peoples and communities. natives; establish the definition of bookstores in which they are recognized as a space for the dissemination of reading; encourage and support the development of book fairs as cultural spaces for the dissemination and promotion of reading; consider the digital book and promote the supply and production of books in systems or formats accessible to people with disabilities; redefine the powers of the Ministry of Public Education (SEP) in this matter to harmonize it with the provisions of the new General Education Law; include the gender perspective in promotion and promotion policies and programs, ”among others.
Deputy Sergio Mayer Bretón, president of the Chamber of Deputies’ Commission for Culture and Cinematography, stressed the importance of continuing to work to achieve incentives applicable to the entire book chain. “We definitely have a historical debt with bookstores, with the issue of zero rate. That would be our pending issue, which we are committed to moving forward to help them continue to promote reading, not only in the extension to 36 months of the single price, “he declared.
Letter to the President
Bookmakers ask for ratification as an essential activity
While the voting on the Law for the Promotion of Reading and the Book was taking place in San Lázaro, the main organizations of the Mexican publishing industry published a letter addressed to the President of the Republic, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to express that this “ it is in a difficult situation, with signs of high risk in all its segments and many difficulties to stay afloat ”.
For this reason, they requested that the editorial and commercial activity of the book be ratified as essential, as was done in the Official Gazette of the Federation on August 3, but effective December 31. And it is that the indications by the announcement of a return to the red traffic light in December for Mexico City and the metropolitan area once again excluded this activity from the essentials. The prolongation of the closure and the accumulated crisis during 2020, they explain, increasingly puts the publishing industry in front of the precipice.
“Bookstores, the most visible part of this chain, are essential and must always remain open. That they can all operate and survive is of vital importance for society as a whole ”, says the letter signed by Caniem, Almac, the Editors Club and RELI, among others.
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