The Minister of Development, Kostas Skrekas, referred to the government’s new anti-punctuality measures on SKAI’s “Today” show, stressing that “we will not stop until we see inflation deescalate”.

In particular, Mr. Skrekas, when asked about the results that the government expects from the implementation of the measures, replied that “we announced a set of four measures, very strong, well thought out and we believe that they will bring results in the reduction of products”.

“We will announce the prices of the products for which we took the measures before the implementation of the measures to see how much the prices will have decreased” added the Minister of Development.

“The price of baby milk is 30% higher than the foreign price, which shows that some companies had found the opportunity to profit. The problem of accuracy is real.”

“The government is taking heavy measures with the first measure being checks for accuracy. Controls have been carried out all the previous period with heavy fines even in multinational companies which were paid. We will announce which companies were fined and which paid,” said the Minister of Development while adding that “the companies that were fined reduced prices.”

“We want to apply the measures for precision in the categories that we mapped and saw that there is a problem such as baby milk and detergents in which discrepancies with Europe were recorded,” he added.

“The measures concern the reduction of products on the shelf while simultaneously reducing the discounts made by suppliers in the retail trade. We pass the benefit directly to the consumer. We will announce the prices before and after the implementation of the measures so that consumers can see the reduction. The differences may exceed 15% immediately” said Mr. Skrekas.

Asked if the reduction of VAT could have results in reducing prices, Mr. Skrekas said that “if we reduced VAT like Spain, it is not certain that there would be a reduction in prices”.

“The second measure concerns the prevention of price increases and we say that any company that raises prices will not do promotional actions. The third concerns baby milk because after the checks we did we saw that the prices in Greece are unreasonably more expensive.”

“The last measure concerns absolute price transparency from the field to the consumer,” the Minister of Development said in closing.