At a press conference on Thursday 16th February, the Development minister Adonis Georgiadis announced changes for the pre-Easter period to the Household Basket, which aims to keep down prices at the main supermarkets for the consumer.
Among the new products are: lentils, beans and chickpeas, pressed ham and turkey, whole chicken and chicken parts, fresh beef, long-life/UHT and full-fat milk, chocolates and white cheese. Additional Lenten products are halva, Lenten salads (pastes) and at least two frozen seafood products for each supermarket chain. It was stressed that all the leaflets advertising the supermarket offers can be seen as of now on the site e-katanalotis.gov.gr.
Mr Georgiadis also announced changes to the way in which product prices are displayed, giving the supermarkets a month to implement the changes. Labels are to be printed in bold type showing the details and the prices of the products. The aim, he said, is the protection of the consumer. Following expiry of the deadline, fines will be levied for non-compliance.
Supermarket fines
In the meantime, the ministry of Development and Investments has levied severe fines on several supermarkets following investigations by the ministry’s Market Monitoring Unit, for contraventions of the law on profiteering and for showing different prices on the shelf to those recorded on the cash register.
At the press conference, Mr Georgiadis announced the following fines: €319,900 to AB (the second largest which has been imposed on a supermarket), and several other fines of under €50,000, namely, €26,680 for Lidl, €21,387 for Galaxia and €9,380 for Kritikos, while recommendations were made to two other firms.
Dismissing the supermarket chains’ claims that the discrepancies were down to human error, the minister said that there were too many of them and the fines should set an example. The government was merely carrying out its duty to keep a check on the market, he said. “The fines do not mean that they are regularly breaking the law,” he continued, “but in more than a few cases there was excessive profit in a class of products, either within the basket, or more often, outside it.”
The minister called on the retail chains to be more careful since, as he said, “we are not disposed to let them off, we will protect the interests of the consumers. The laws are strict and are applied in other countries too, but food price inflation is consistently much lower in our country than the average, so the measures are working.”
(Haniotika Nea 17-02-23)