Greek Dev. Min.: The battle against inflation is starting to pay off

The measures that have been taken, with the “Household Basket” and with the market pass, have led to us being the 6th country with the lowest inflation in food and the 4th in overall inflation, said the Minister of Development and Investments Adonis Georgiadis who visited two supermarkets today together with Deputy Minister Nikos Papathanasis.

“The battle against high prices is starting to pay off. The fact that we have managed to have lower inflation than the European average and at the same time twice the growth, is something very difficult. If you saw the Bloomberg article on Friday, it talks about a “miracle”, focusing not on the fact that we have twice the growth rate, but on the fact that we have managed to have twice the growth rate with lower inflation,” the minister added.

Easter market

In relation to the Easter market, he said that a meeting was held with the president of the Bakers and will follow with Varvakeio market merchants “to come to our final decisions within the next 24 hours on what we will include in the “Easter Basket” because there are various conflicting opinions”. He noted, however, that lamb and goat prices are under pressure due to reduced production by livestock farmers and high demand for exports due to the Catholic Easter. “We are making a great effort with my colleague, the Minister of Rural Development, Mr. Georgantas, on how we can keep prices as low as possible. In 2-3 days we will make announcements. I am modestly optimistic that we will again achieve something”, he said.

“It is obvious that the prices have been stayed stable and we have really reduced, in terms of the Basket, the issue of high prices,” said Mr. Papathanasis for his part and added:

“Combined with the shopping card, which returns 10% of the purchases we make in supermarkets, we are creating a big break in the wave of inflation. Something no other country has done. And of course with e-Consumer, we can check the prices of the products in real time. From your mobile phone you can see in real time the prices of the products as they come automatically from the supermarket data. This tool is not available in any other country.”