The skinned lamb heads stare balefully out at the elderly women agonizing over them, while a butcher spreads out a piece of white spongy tripe to entice Greeks preparing for their traditional Easter feast.
“People don’t buy a whole lamb nowadays, 10 kilos, they buy three or four kilos,” said Kostas Kelaiditis, 68, as he pounded his butcher’s ax through bones and sinew in the central meat market in Athens. “The whole lamb is for those who declare an income of 50,000 euros a year or more.”
Greeks will celebrate the end of a 40-day fast this weekend that symbolizes self-denial and atonement, a message that’s taken on enhanced meaning for some.
The arcade of meat and offal in the Varvakios market is pulsating with shoppers who are browsing, not buying, as the country marks a fifth year since it accepted wage and pension cuts in return for billions in loans to stave off financial collapse. This year, the talk around the food stalls is of Greece running out of cash for pensions and wages after the government repays the International Monetary Fund a day before Good Friday in the Orthodox calendar.
“In terms of the cash position of Greece obviously it’s a matter of weeks now,” Gilles Moec, the chief European economist for Bank of America Merrill Lynch, told Bloomberg Television on March 27. “They are really in a situation where apparently they are scraping the bottom of the drawers.”
Waiting Game
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s government, elected on promises to end austerity, said it will meet an obligation to pay the IMF 450 million euros ($494 million) this week.Finance Ministry officials said the country has enough cash to pay all its bills this week, though coffers are running dry as Greece negotiates with euro-region peers for the release of funds under the second of Greece’s two bailouts.
For Eleni Rizopoulou, the anxiety is just more pressure on a business that has been selling freshly ground coffee, Greek brandy and traditional fruit preserves since 1901.
Unsettled by talk of capital controls at banks, suppliers now want payment upfront before she can get imported coffee beans, so she orders smaller amounts more frequently.
“We are waiting, waiting to see just like the Passion of Christ,” Rizopoulou, 59, said. “Banks, for companies like us, are not giving us even a cent. Before, we had a month, 40 days to pay. Now it’s pay and then you receive.”
Putin Meeting
Even as confidence among Greek consumers soared with the Jan. 25 election of Tsipras, who promised to write off debt, restore pensions and increase the minimum wage, Greeks have pulled their savings from the nation’s banks. About 24 billion euros has taken flight in the past three months, bringing the outstanding total to the lowest level in 10 years.As delegates from the euro region and IMF continue discussions on a package of economic measures to win new money, Tsipras is meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin, the leader of another Orthodox nation under pressure.
With EU sanctions over Russia’s conflict with Ukraine hurting the economy, Putin isn’t in a position to replace the Europeans as Greece’s financial benefactor although the country may lift restrictions on Greek food produce, according to three Russian government officials.
At the Varvakios market, named for a Greek pirate who became a Russian millionaire thanks to the largesse of Catherine the Great, passersby are talking about the country’s debt. They ignore the meters of intestines wrapped around meat hooks and the heart, lungs and stomach of lambs and goats hung in a row.
The Institute of Retail Consumer Goods estimates that competition for customers means the traditional Easter feast will be about 10 percent cheaper than last April, when Greece ended a four-year exile from bond markets with a 3 billion-euro bond sale. It’s not making much difference to the butcher.
“They’ll buy later or at the last minute to get a better price,” said Kelaiditis. “It’s not as busy as last year. This is the fashion now; last year was always better.”
Source:
www.bloomberg.com
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