Lithuania says local dairy industry continues to decline

February 7, MINSK . The Lithuanian dairy industry continues to decline. This was stated by Petras Čepkauskas, an expert at the price monitoring portal Pricer.lt, Lithuanian media reports.

According to him, prices for dairy raw materials in Lithuania are now practically the highest in Europe, not counting island states such as Malta and Cyprus, where the dairy industry is poorly developed. "If you look at the entire period of independence, somewhere since 1991, we used to produce about 3 million tons of dairy raw materials. Now we have dropped to 1.5 million tons. Accordingly, we are becoming a country of expensive MILK, as funny as it may sound," Čepkauskas said.

He noted that back in 2005, Lithuania imported milk for 10 million euros, and now the turnover has grown to 130 million euros. "That is, our dairy industry is going downhill, raw materials are becoming more expensive, and accordingly, products are becoming more expensive . And, of course, the consumer who overpays the most is the one who buys Lithuanian dairy products, because the cheapest alternatives are most often Polish," explains the price analyst.

Pricer.lt's analysis also showed that food prices continue to rise in Lithuania . Thus, the basket of the cheapest food products in Lithuanian stores in January cost 3.1% (EUR 2.13) more than in December, and 7.9% (EUR 5.16) more than a year ago. The most expensive items were: dark chocolate, apples,yogurt , rice, ground coffee , butter , frozen pike fillet, bananas,cottage cheese .

"Of the 52 products we studied, 38 have become more expensive. If you look at our baskets of the cheapest products, they have become more expensive year-on-year by 7.9%, and products of well-known brands - by 7.7%," Chepkauskas noted.