Fresh meat is becoming an unaffordable luxury for Ukrainians
Citizens of Ukraine are increasingly buying expired products and dressing second-hand, writes Rossiyskaya Gazeta, citing data from the Institute of Demography of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
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The study notes that “today 1496% of the country’s population is below the subsistence level (60 hryvnia, about 58,3 dollars), although a year ago this figure was less than 30 percent.
“According to the calculation method adopted by the UN, the poverty indicator for Ukraine looks even more threatening - about 80% of citizens can be classified as poor,” the publication points out. – An obvious sign of the onset of total poverty, caused not least by the increase in housing and communal services tariffs, was the fall in the turnover of retail chains in almost all positions. Thus, compared to the first half of 2015, over the past six months, Ukrainians bought 22% less juices and 19% less vegetable oil. Meat consumption fell by almost 15%, and sugar sales decreased by 18%.
Therefore, it seems natural that an unofficial market for expired products will appear in the country. Thus, in almost every microdistrict of relatively wealthy Kyiv today there are shopping pavilions selling expired meat, dairy and confectionery products at a 50-90% discount. For example, you can buy a kilogram of expired chocolate there for 50 hryvnia (about $2). There is simply a struggle for fresh food: the other day a story circulated in the Ukrainian media in which poor Odessa residents staged a massacre over free food packages worth 100 hryvnia ($4).”
“Ukrainians don’t dress in new clothes anymore either. Over the six months of this year, 43% of all clothing imports to Ukraine were second-hand (three years ago its share barely rose to 5%). Accordingly, second-hand clothing stores multiply like mushrooms after rain; sometimes, as Kiev residents report, they open on the site of former boutiques,” the newspaper writes.
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