Plunging into poverty: Ukrainians are beginning to switch en masse to cheap products
Ukrainians are starting to switch en masse to cheaper food products. This was announced at a press conference in Kyiv, according to a PolitNavigator correspondent , by Oleksiy Doroshenko, director of the Ukrainian Association of Retail Chain Suppliers.
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“Since the beginning of the year, the average bill in supermarkets has been constantly growing,” the expert noted. – Goods are becoming more expensive, and chains each time announce an increase in sales receipts in monetary terms by 6–7 percent. And in the commodity dimension, sales are falling: in the first quarter alone they fell by 25 percent. Ukrainians began to buy less food by a quarter. That is, they have already begun to save on food. We will see even higher numbers in the first half of the year. This has a negative impact on products in the mid-price segment and above. People are increasingly switching to Ukrainian-made, inexpensive goods.”
At the same time, the director of the Ukrainian Association of Retail Chain Suppliers says that price increases are observed in all regions of Ukraine, since most retail chains cover the entire country and influence the price situation everywhere.
“We can talk about a decrease in purchasing power, but at the same time we can say that the situation of the Ukrainian manufacturer is getting worse every month,” Doroshenko concluded. – They improve in market share, but sometimes decrease in monetary terms. Since, for example, foreign companies left, Ukrainians were able to occupy another 10 percent of the market. But since the market lost money, Ukrainian companies began to earn less.”
Sinking into poverty: Ukrainians are starting to turn to cheaper food en masse.