These merchants denounce that there are more and more centers that obtain profits with an activity for which they lack a license
Cartagena’s booksellers don’t want schools to sell textbooks. Several establishments have come together to demand from the administrations measures that prevent it. They consider that it is an increasingly widespread practice and that together with competition from the Internet, it has led them to lose 90% of sales in recent years.
They affirm that the educational centers receive the money from the vouchers to distribute them to the families and that they acquire the manuals. However, more and more schools buy the material from publishers and then sell it to families.
According to the booksellers, with these sales the centers obtain benefits for an activity for which they do not have a license, assured Ana Albaladejo, from the Albaladejo bookstore. “The bookseller does receive inspections, pay their taxes, meet their social charges, insurance, payroll, IBI, VAT payment, bills for supplies such as electricity,” she recalled.
The bookstore explained that these practices began in the concerted school and have been extended to the public one. She even denounces that there are centers that also sell school supplies. “Schools are being transformed into bookstores, where books and school supplies have come to be sold in the concierge or in the classrooms of the center itself, with a volunteer, a teacher or members of the AMPA acting as a seller,” according to the booksellers.
In that guild, they hold publishers responsible for harming small businesses by offering centers lower prices when buying books. “You can’t compete with those prices. We cannot make such a discount, we would end up losing money, ”lamented Ana Albaladejo. She added that the profit margins of this business decrease every day more and lead them to close.
Cartagena’s booksellers have already asked the regional administration to intervene to put an end to this situation, which “if it is not illegal, at least it is alegal,” they assured. They demand that schools effectively carry out their work, deliver the voucher to families and that they decide where to buy what is necessary for the new course, instead of doing it at the school itself.
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