Christmas dinner will cost Greeks slightly less this year
A typical Christmas dinner will cost Greek households 1.29 percent less this year than it did in 2016, mainly due to pork and potatoes, a study published on Monday by the Hellenic Confederation of Commerce and Entrepreneurship (ESEE) has found.
Conducted in the period of December 11-16, ESEE’s price survey found that a typical holiday meal – a meat dish, a vegetable, a salad, fizzy drinks, wine or beer, and a traditional dessert – for six to eight people will cost 149.02 euros this year, against 150.96 euros in 2016 and 147.39 the year before that. The slight dip of 1.29 percent in the overall cost is largely due to a contraction in the prices of fruits and vegetables of 4.32 percent – led by potatoes, which dropped 25.35 percent – but also in supermarket products (3.72 percent) like alcoholic beverages.
A survey of the prices at the Varvakeios central market in downtown Athens revealed that the smallest decline in prices is in the meat category, where lamb and turkey remain at the same levels as last year. Only pork is cheaper this year, by 5.26 percent, helping consumers contain the cost of their holiday meal.
A global rise in the price of butter means that the traditional kourabie biscuits will cost consumers 5.63 percent more if they’re packaged and 1.29 percent if they’re fresh from a bakery, but the nutty melomakarono biscuits remain at the same levels as last year.
Beer and affordable red wine have also gone down by 0.74 percent and 8.36 percent, ESEE found, though a 1.5 liter bottle of a fizzy drink costs 6.77 percent more this December compared to last.
Experts see turnover this December showing a slight improvement of around 1.5 percent compared with the same month last year, mainly thanks an uptick of 0.6 percent in private consumption seen in the first nine months of the year. The anticipated return of turnover in the retail sector to December 2014 levels of around 4.1 billion euros, the experts add, reflects a small improvement in some of the basic indices of the Greek economy.
