Representatives of consumer associations and supermarkets spoke on Thursday of a positive start with significant room for improvement, regarding the launch of the e-kalathi electronic platform from yesterday, Wednesday.
Speaking to CNA, the Executive Secretary of the Cyprus Association of Supermarkets, Andreas Hadjiadamou, expressed the hope that the platform will become an essential tool for informing and informing the Cypriot consumer and will operate in his best interests.
He noted that throughout the process, the supermarkets had collaborated on the implementation of the platform with the aim of informing the Cypriot consumer. During the discussion, he stated, several omissions and setbacks had been identified. The Association expressed the position that the entire process constituted an intervention in the market, something which, as he said, the Committee for the Protection of Competition itself had admitted in the first session in Parliament, with a strong opinion, although it later changed its position.
He also highlighted the issue of creating unfair competition towards some businesses, particularly in supermarkets, as, as he said, sectors such as kiosks and bakeries were left out of the platform.
"In recent years, the food market in Cyprus has been multi-channel, there are various stores that operate like supermarkets, with supermarket products, etc. and with high traffic," he pointed out. "These stores are not on the platform and this creates unfair competition and adverse discrimination, if you like, in terms of the supermarket sector and supermarket stores. We will monitor the development of the platform and hope that it will work positively in the general interest," he commented.
Asked whether, in the initial phase of its operation, the platform is meeting the demands of supermarkets, Ms. Hadjiadamou answered in the affirmative, despite the problems that arise regarding the comprehensive information of consumers.
When asked whether an additional workload has been created for supermarkets due to the obligation to update prices and products included in e-kalathi on a daily basis, he said that supermarkets are indeed taking on a new turnover at their own cost and great burden in order to be able to support and sustain the platform, as they had done during the preparatory work with many hours of work and constant contacts.
Finally, when asked if there is any institutionalized framework for communicating with the Consumer Protection Service for interventions or corrections to the platform, Mr. Hadjiadamou said that the two sides are in constant communication to resolve the problems that arise and not only these.
He also noted that in the last two years the Supermarket Association has maintained much more frequent communication with the competent services than in the past to resolve any problems that arise, something which, as he said, should also be credited to the new leadership of the Ministry.
For his part, the president of the Cyprus Consumers' Association, Marios Drousiotis, said regarding the launch of the platform that the e-kalathi that was put into operation is not what they had been promised.
He added that the Ministry of Commerce and the competent Consumer Protection Service did not invite the members of the Association for consultations, nor did they ask for their opinions on e-kalathi.
"Now we are making our criticism, a good faith criticism. They promised us an e-kalathi from which the consumer would have, for example, ten units of benefit and they presented us and gave us an e-kalathi with three units of benefit out of the ten they promised us. Also, within the e-kalathi there are only 478 barcode items, while a supermarket has around eight to ten thousand barcodes, so the consumer's choice is limited," he noted.
Another disadvantage of the platform, according to Mr. Drousiotis, concerns the fact that it includes results for the cheapest supermarkets by province and not by criteria of distance from the consumer's place of residence.
He added that a third disadvantage, which will become apparent over time, is that if people switch to 478 items, they will necessarily choose from these 478, with the result that in six months there will be complaints from suppliers of other similar items that are not on the platform that their sales have fallen because consumers have been directed to specific products, with the natural consequence of increasing the prices of these other products.
"The whole problem was created by the indecisiveness of the Consumer Protection Service and by extension the Ministry of Commerce to face the pressures of supermarkets to enter e-kalathi with as few products as possible. I emphasize that at the beginning when they promised us the channel, they told us about 3.000 products, to begin with. The 3.000 became 2.000, then it became 1.000 and in the end they gave us 478," he pointed out.
"They promised us a basket and they gave us a small basket. Even though this has its usefulness, I won't say that it makes things worse, I'm not negating the benefit. But they gave us a benefit much smaller than what we expected and than what they promised us," concluded Mr. Drousiotis.
Source: KYPE
