Athens News Agency: News in English, 05-11-03

Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article

From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] Main opposition launches price-watch campaign

[01] Main opposition launches price-watch campaign

Five thousand party officials in 410 teams would conduct on-the-spot market inspections and inform the public of the outcome, PASOK deputy Anna Diamantopoulou, responsible for development, competitiveness and consumer policy, told reporters. The government later rejected PASOK's criticism.

Speaking with the party's secretary Mariliza Xenoyiannakopoulou, Diamantopoulou said that the drive would focus mainly on consumer goods that were purchased by average households.

"There has been a highly concerted government communications campaign over the past few days to show that there are no high prices," Diamantopoulou claimed.

Xenoyiannakopoulou noted that rising prices were hurting people's pockets, accusing the government of a complete failure to resolve the problem.

Needed were effective market inspections, a guarantee of competitiveness and a crack-down on profiteering, she added.

The government rejected the criticism by PASOK that it had failed to conduct effective checks against excessive prices and profiteering.

"At a time when the Greek public linked high prices to PASOK and sent it into the opposition, the party has now announced that it is starting a 'campaign' to give information about high prices," Development Minister Dimitris Sioufas, and his deputy, Yiannis Papathanasiou, said in a statement.

The two ministers noted that they were accomplishing what their predecessors had failed to do, which was to carry out numerous controls and slap fines on violators.

"Never has the government said that high prices do not exist. This is a phenomenon we inherited from the PASOK governments," the statement said.

Earlier, PASOK announced that it had launched a nationwide price-watch campaign following steep hikes in the market. Party officials said the government had staged a concerted communications campaign over the past few days to demonstrate that prices were normal.

Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article