The Office of the Prime Minister announced in his national address on October 11th, the addition of thirty eight items to the price control list. The government has given domestic grocers until Friday to implement the changes after a meeting was held with industry stakeholders.

The Minister of Economic Affairs, Sen. the Hon. Michael Halkitis spoke with reporters on the issue. He said, “we’re sure that there is a middle ground that we can reach. We don’t see this leading to massive business closures, we do not see that. But we’ve asked the associations to provide us some numbers we can look at but we don’t anticipate that. We think that it is reasonable what we are proposing.”

Subsequent to a meeting with the Retail Grocers Association on Monday, Halkitis says “some grocers expressed the fact that the need time to change their prices on their shelves. And so we’re saying okay we’ll be cognizant of that. Of course if someone can do it more quickly that fine but if its taking some people a few days to do it, we’re mindful of that.”