«The prices of lamb and goat, the staple that our fellow citizens prefer for the Easter holidays, have been kept absolutely at last year's levels with minute precision. Some people may be annoyed because they had intended to sell lambs at EUR 13, 14 and 15 per kilo and now, because of the basket, they will have to sell them cheaper, so they will earn less money than they had estimated or they will not be able to cover any losses they may have, I accept that. I understand them and I do not argue with them,’ said, among others, the Minister of Development and Investment, Adonis Georgiades, who, together with the Deputy Minister, Nikos Papathanasis, visited today two stores of the supermarket chains »Masoutis« and »Galaxy«, on the occasion of the 23rd week of implementation of the »Household Basket« and the 2nd day of implementation of the »Easter Basket«.
«When I spoke to the farmers the day before yesterday, via teleconference, they told me that they consider this price, i.e. 10 euros, excessive, that it is destroying them, etc. I showed them their own invoices that they were slaughtering at 7 and 7.30 euros a week ago for export to Italy. I did not understand why they can slaughter at 7 and 7.30 euros for Italy and cannot slaughter at 7 and 7.30 euros for Greece? I was told that in Italy they were selling at a loss. And I said to them, why did they decide to sell at a loss in Italy and why did they not decide to sell at a loss in Greece? So the Greek consumer has no soul?» said Georgiades and added:
«After a long period of concern about the price of obelias and Easter goods, we, as the Ministry of Development, had kept our cool and said we were taking the necessary steps to contain the increases. We helped households to be able to find meat at a price affordable to them, dealing with the effects of the price increases brought on by the war.
We see the same in the rest of the “Household Basket”. We are now in its 23rd week of operation, we are approaching the half-year mark and we see that the basic products have remained absolutely stable and many of them have even been reduced.
I want to thank the supermarket chains. Competition worked and I expect next week we will have new reductions.».
For his part, Mr Papathanasis stressed: «Twenty-third week that the “Household Basket” has been in place and in 90% of products prices have remained the same or lower. The basket, overall, has decreased as a cost from the previous week by 1,25%. In fact, four baskets are currently in effect: “Household Basket”, “Lenten Basket”, “Godparents” Basket“ and ”Easter Basket". We continue to raise mounds in this crisis of accuracy.
We should remember that from the application we have on our mobile phones we can see in real time the prices of products, as they come from the supermarket databases. We are the only country in Europe that has such a tool, which helps us to buy cheaper products.».
Regarding, moreover, the prices of petrol, Mr Georgiades recommended «not to create panic» adding: «In Attica it is lower, around 1.90. There is no 2.40 on an island that I was listening to this morning. The average price on the islands is 2.10. Of course fuel has gone up a bit, it was around 1.85 last week as a consequence of the global fuel market crisis due to the OPEC decision. But it is still not the rally that is being shown. We've had a 5-6 cent increase in the past week. We'll be watching it and we're here to take action. Inspections are continuing at the petrol stations with great intensity and we are constantly putting fines where there is an issue.».
