“Prices for lamb and goatthe basic good that our fellow citizens prefer for the Easter holidays, were absolutely kept at last year’s levels to the nearest minute. Some people may be worried because they intended to sell the lambs for 13, 14 and 15 euros per kilo and now because of the basket they will be forced to sell them cheaper, so they will earn less money than they calculated or they cannot cover the 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 Investments, Adonis Georgiadis, who together with the Deputy Minister, Nikos Papathanasis, visited today two stores of the “Masoutis” and “Galaxia” supermarket chains. on the occasion of the 23rd week of application of the “Household Basket” and the 2nd day of application of the “Easter Basket”.

“When I spoke with the breeders the day before yesterday, via video conference, they told me that they consider this price, i.e. 10 euros, excessive, that it destroys 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 didn’t understand, why they can slaughter with 7 and 7.30 euros for Italy and they can’t slaughter with 7 and 7.30 euros for Greece? They told me 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 not decide to sell at a loss in Greece as well? Does the Greek consumer have no soul?”said Mr. Georgiadis and added:

“After a long period of concern about the price of ovelia and Easter goods, we, as the Ministry of Development, had kept our cool and said that we are taking the necessary steps to contain the increases. We helped households find meat at an affordable price, dealing with the consequences of wartime precision.

We see the same in the rest of the “Household Basket”. We are now in the 23rd week of its operation, we are approaching the half term and we see that the basic products have remained absolutely stable and many of them have already been reduced.

I want to thank the supermarket chains. The competition worked and I expect next week we will have new reductions”.

For his part, Mr. Papathanasis emphasized: “Twenty-third week that the “Household Basket” has been in effect and 90% of the products have kept their prices the same or lower. The basket, as a whole, decreased in cost from the previous week by 1.25%. Currently, in fact, four baskets are in force: The “Household Basket”, “Lenten Basket”, “Godmothers Basket” and “Easter Basket”. We continue to level the dikes in this accuracy crisis.

Remember that from the application we have on our mobile phones we can see the prices of the products in real time, as they come from the supermarkets’ databases. We are the only country that has such a tool in Europe, which helps us to buy cheaper products.”

Regarding, moreover, the prices of gasoline, Mr. Georgiadis recommended “not to create panic” adding: “In Attica it is lower, around 1.90. There is no 2.40 on an island that I listened to in the morning. The average price on the islands is 2.10. Certainly fuel has gone up a bit, it was around 1.85 last week, as a consequence of the global crisis in the fuel market due to the OPEC decision. However, the rally that is presented is still not happening. We have an increase of 5-6 minutes in the past week. We will monitor it and we are here to take action. Controls continue at the gas stations with great intensity and we constantly issue fines where there is a problem.”