Foods

It was early April when in his report for 2023 the governor of the Financial institution of Greece Giannis Stournaras sounded the alarm for the “quasi-oligopolistic circumstances in sure markets for items and providers that cut back competitors and exacerbate inflationary pressures”. In an interview on the similar time, he had recognized oligopolies in mealsgasoline, banks and personal hospital care.

The problem of oligopolistic circumstances in key sectors of the financial system is again within the information in opposition to the background of the letter despatched by the Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to the President of the Fee Ursula von der Leyen relating to the pricing strategies adopted by multinational firms. And it’s because, as knowledgeable analysts level out, it’s the oligopolistic circumstances that permit multinationals to “play” in Greece with strategies that improve their earnings on the expense of customers, such because the Geographical Provide Restrictions to which the Prime Minister refers intimately in his letter.

Synthetic boundaries to produce

The Geographical Provide Constraints (Territorial Provide Constraints – TSCs) are synthetic obstacles imposed, as Kyriakos Mitsotakis notes in his letter, “by massive multinational firms between the markets of the member states of the European Union with the intention to exploit the dominant place they’ve in markets, primarily of the smallest of them”. In a associated report revealed in November 2020, the Fee explains that these restrictions are positioned by multinationals on native wholesale and retail firms with the intention to forestall them from sourcing branded merchandise from different EU international locations than the one wherein they’re primarily based. That is removed from an remoted observe: 49% of the retailers and wholesalers who participated within the Fee’s survey reported that they’ve been confronted with TSCs.

The losses within the pockets of Europeans from this observe are staggering: The European Fee estimates that if middlemen in 16 EU international locations might freely supply branded merchandise straight from the nation with the bottom buy costs, customers might save round 14 .1 billion euros when shopping for gadgets similar to bread and cereals, alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks and different meals.

From the angle of the multinationals, after all, the “shear” in costs is commonly attributed to completely different tax regimes and completely different labor prices from nation to nation, in addition to manufacturing and transportation prices. The Fee’s report, nevertheless, underlines that these components don’t justify the chaotic discrepancies from state to state. Extra essential appears to be one other issue identified in the identical survey by representatives of huge firms: worth discrimination relying on the state of competitors in every market.

“Collusion” because of lack of competitors

Because it follows, then, the extent to which firms impose practices similar to Geographical Provide Restrictions is dependent upon the aggressive surroundings in every nation. In Greece, because the professor on the Legislation Faculty of the Democritus College of Thrace explains in “Vima” and also you have been a member of the Competitors Fee for 11 years George Triantafyllakis, the oligopolistic market construction results in “an implicit collusion” as, “within the absence of intense competitors, multinationals discover the infrastructure prepared” to maintain costs excessive. “When in Greece a multinational firm finds solely two or three extra gamers, it can want to maintain costs excessive because it is not going to endure competitors from anybody else,” he notes. Quite the opposite, in international locations like Germany and France, “if a multinational tries to maintain costs excessive, it will likely be destroyed by competitors.”

However what are the components that preserve and reproduce the oligopolistic circumstances within the Greek market? In line with Georgios Triantafyllakis, it’s a combination of geographical and historic components. “It’s a small market, distant from the net of Central Europe, which has not developed the speed of secondary manufacturing [στο ΑΕΠ]he explains. “The event is principally within the after-trade commerce, so there’s a sturdy dependence on overseas imports for merchandise. The historic path of the nation didn’t permit it to have many exportable items. Thus, the financial construction of “hyper-commercialism and imports” favored the dominance of commerce and trade by a number of firms and the formation of an surroundings of weak competitors, which doesn’t permit worth compression.

Shopping for the identical merchandise extra expensively

The shortage of competitors is the mandatory substrate for multinationals’ “recreation” with costs, with strategies that, though authorized, increase critical moral points. As, for instance, the observe of switch pricing, within the context of which the Greek – on this case – subsidiaries of worldwide giants purchase extra expensively from their overseas dad or mum firms the identical merchandise which can be bought cheaper within the huge markets.

“It has been established that the multinationals form the costs in accordance with the nation to which the product is directed” says the president of INKA George Lehouritis. As he notes, a product may be produced for instance in Germany, then despatched to a 3rd nation and from there imported into Greece, with the corresponding “cap” on the value. The identical observe is described by the president of EKPOIZO Panagiota Kalapotharakou, stressing that this can be a reliable process that, nevertheless, hides deceit. Furthermore, he underlines, whereas the will increase are transferred on to the buyer, the identical doesn’t occur when costs deescalate. “Transportation prices have decreased in comparison with the primary interval after the pandemic, however these reductions haven’t been handed on to the buyer.”

The advantages and dangers

Strain from persistent inflation, mixed with different components, is driving increasingly more customers to on-line buying looking for higher offers. It’s indicative that, in accordance with Eurostat information, on-line gross sales have climbed from €7.5 billion in 2018 to over €16 billion in 2023, with on-line customers reaching 75% of web customers final yr.

“The attentive client advantages manifold from e-commerce as a result of he can simply do market analysis” notes the president of EKPOIZO Panagiota Kalapotharakouwhich emphasizes that many new households select the Web for his or her grocery store buying as properly, thus avoiding the temptation of pointless purchases, which they succumb to when visiting bodily shops.

Nonetheless, as latest analysis from Mastercard factors out, on-line buying additionally carries the alternative danger: In 2023, US customers will spend $735 billion greater than they in any other case would, because of expanded telecommuting that makes it simpler to spend usually pointless on-line buying, even throughout working hours.

Coordination: Angelos Skordas

Editor: Panagiotis Sotiris