CHRISTMAS may well work out cheaper this year than it was last year.
According to Commerce Minister, Antonis Paschalides, his Ministry is making every effort to ensure that the Cyprus market is stocked with quality produce at reasonable prices.
“There are and will be enough products on the shelves,” he said yesterday on a tour of Nicosia supermarkets.
Paschalides said according to his observations prices on vegetables and many other basic foodstuffs were lower than they were last year.
“We are performing checks and our aim is, if at all possible, for the ‘Christmas table’ to cost the same or less this year than it did last year,” he said.
Paschalides toured supermarkets around lunchtime yesterday to check the prices on a variety of food and produce.
He wanted to confirm for himself where the prices stood for the consumer, and to observe the selection and quality on offer, he said.
Paschalides stressed that his Ministry supervised the carrying out of the appropriate checks and controls so that consumers could be assured of the quality and safety of the produce they were buying and thus make their purchases by comparing prices.
The Pancyprian Organisation of Industry and Professional Shopkeepers (POVEK) sent a letter yesterday to Paschalides, renewing their calls for the television advert by Orphanides supermarkets advertising lamb at low prices to be stopped.
“We ask for your prompt intervention to stop the false news report/advertisement of Orphanides supermarkets,” said the letter.
According to POVEK, Orphanides was advertising Greek lamb for €7.49 per kilo and Cypriot lamb for €9.49 per kilo and included the comment: “The prices announced by the Pancyprian Butchers Association are much higher and have nothing to do with the prices of lamb sold by Orphanides”.
The Butchers Association’s letter to the Minister largely reiterated the demands made earlier in a letter to the Director of the Radio and Television Regulatory Authority in which POVEK said the butchers had never announced a set price for lamb.
“The formal position of the Pancyprian Butchers Association is that the price of meats is determined by the operations of the market economy on the basis of supply and demand under conditions of healthy competition”.
In retaliation, the President of the Supermarket’s Organisation, Andreas Hadjiadamou, said yesterday: “This thing which happens every year, with Mr Livadiotis always at the forefront, needs to stop. You can’t regulate the market with announcements.”
Kostas Livadiotis, the head of the Butchers Association said: “From lamb, nobody recoups his costs. These blows below the belt which are happening to the butchers are worst. Their purpose was to imply that butchers are expensive and supermarkets are cheap.”
