Tesco is set to miss today’s first deadline for the Competition Commission’s (CC) supermarket inquiry.
The stage-one deadline on August 10 was announced in May.
A total of 22 grocers received a detailed questionnaire at the beginning of July with an August deadline for responses.
The supermarket giant said that it could not produce the volume of information required in the time given and could not say whether it would be able to do so by the end of the month.
A Tesco spokesperson said: “We have worked hard to be helpful, but with the level of detail they want we won’t make it.
“They are asking for data we don’t normally collect, in a certain way.”
Asda and Sainsbury’s will meet the deadline.
A CC inquiry spokesperson said: “We are prepared to be flexible where there is a good reason but we’ve made it clear that shouldn’t stop them getting the rest of the information to us by the date indicated.
“But we need to push these people along. If we gave them four months then they should take four months.”
The CC investigation is expected to take two years. The watchdog has now sent the questionnaire to wholesalers.
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