Tag Archives: supermarkets

New products for the Lenten Basket

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.

Seafood is among the products which supermarkets are adding to the “Lenten Basket”. Photo: 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)

The Household Basket

With inflation in Greece currently running at an overall 12 per cent, according to figures from ELSTAT for September, the government has been taking steps to relieve the pressure on the average consumer. Measures have already been taken to compensate for rises in the cost of electricity and fuel, and this week saw the introduction of the “Household Basket” scheme, which encourages the large supermarket chains to make basic products available at affordable prices.

The scheme, devised by the ministry of Development and Investments, is compulsory for all supermarket chains with an annual turnover of over 90 million euros. Each week they must choose at least 50 products corresponding to a family’s basic necessities, from a list agreed between the supermarkets and the government, which they will make available at reasonable prices. The products will be given special signage on the supermarket shelves and the list must be fixed for a week, before it can be changed. Failure to submit a list will result in the supermarket chain being fined 5,000 euros for each infraction.

The ministry’s e-consumer website e-katanalotis.gov.gr has been set up to provide useful information for Greek consumers. The Household Basket page e-katanalotis.gov.gr/householdBasket carries a list of the participating supermarket chains, and clicking on the logo for each one brings up the supermarket’s list for the current week. Consumers can also search for a specific product on the Products page and get a list of the prices at the different supermarkets. There is also a Fuel page, where consumers can find current prices for different fuel types at petrol stations around the country.

The basic list of products in the Household Basket is as follows:

Products in the Household Basket

Latest developments

With less than a week having passed since the inauguration of the Household Basket, the ministry of Development and Investments has been fine-tuning the details of the scheme to ensure better access to consumers, according to OT.gr. Complaints of difficulty identifying the listed products have resulted in the supermarket chains being requested to provide labels of adequate size and visibility for each product, and to post a list of all the products currently included in the basket at the entrance to their stores. Similar measures are being required of those running e-shops.

A hoped-for effect of the scheme in encouraging price competition between the supermarket chains is already being seen. OT.gr reported on Saturday that the Sklavenitis and AB Vasilopoulous chains had reduced the prices of a total of 40 items in their two lists on e-katanalotis.gov.gr, by an average of 25 per cent.