Consumer goods prices continued to rise on the e-kalathi platform in the first half of May, with increases recorded across 182 product barcodes, the Cyprus consumers association said on Monday.

According to the association, the increases were recorded between May 1 and May 15, covering 31 product categories, with price rises ranging from 1 per cent to 9 per cent. 

The largest increases were observed in the categories of nuts, fruit and vegetable juices, fabric softeners, frozen pasta, baby food, frozen vegetables, olive oil and baby wipes. 

At the same time, the association said that intense competition appears to exist only in a small number of supermarkets.

By contrast, in the vast majority of supermarkets participating in e-kalathi, “there does not seem to be any intense competition”.

It added that price differences between supermarkets remain so wide that they do not point to strong competition. 

More specifically, referring to a new survey of 370 products from a supermarket that operates seven stores and participates in e-kalathi, the association said that “its selling prices were found to be very high compared with the average selling price of all supermarkets on the platform.” 

In some cases, the difference reached up to 91 per cent. 

The association said that its conclusions were based exclusively on prices recorded on the Ministry of Energy’s e-kalathi platform, as well as on prices recorded through the free private smart kalathi application. 

Beyond supermarket prices, the association also examined diesel prices by district, noting that Paphos remains the district with the highest average fuel price. 

According to the findings, the average diesel price in Paphos stood at 185.6 cents per litre, followed by Limassol at 183.3 cents, Famagusta at 182.3 cents, Nicosia at 182.2 cents, and Larnaca, the cheapest district, at 182 cents per litre. 

The association also reviewed the pricing policy followed at fuel stations owned by petroleum import companies, known as corporate stations. 

It said that “retail prices differ both between districts and within the same district.” The companies with corporate stations by product brand are Shell, Petrolina and EKO. 

In Famagusta, the association said there was no variation in retail prices at the corporate stations of the three companies. 

However, in Larnaca, price differences ranged from 2 cents to 2.1 cents per litre, while in Limassol they ranged from 0 cents to 4.3 cents per litre. 

In Nicosia, meanwhile, the variation stood between 2.1 cents and 4.1 cents per litre, while in Paphos it ranged from 0 cents to 5.6 cents per litre. 

The association clarified that the prices concerned only corporate fuel stations. 

“A general assessment from the research on diesel fuel is that the prices of company stations are not formed exclusively by the cost of acquiring the fuel, but also take into account the competition between stations located on the same road or on the same route of consumers,” the association said. 

“There are certainly other factors that force company stations to follow a different pricing policy at their own stations,” it concluded.