[Thanks to Balkan File for the heads up on this]

Serbian trade unions have opened a series of “supermarkets for the poor” called SOS Markets. They offer cut-priced goods to the poor and unemployed.

Over the last few years Belgrade’s farmers markets – the original supermarkets for the poor – have changed in character and, more importantly, in price.

I have heared from multiple sources that the supermarkets flooded the markets with subsidized food to drive out the traditional peasant sellers, and now the markets are only slightly cheaper than the supermarkets.

When I walk around Maxi, with its rows of overpriced imported goods, I wonder how ordinary people afford the goods on offer.

For example, who is actually buying things like Rio Mare Insalatissime? They are tiny 150g tins filled mostly with vegetables and some Tuna, sold for a whopping 350 dinars (£3.50 or $5) per tin?

People go hungry here. One sees people eating from the bins. If these SOS Supermarkets are able to bring food to the hungry, then more power to them. The question is, why is it that food prices in Serbia rising so fast?

Read on:  BBC NEWS | Europe | Serbian supermarkets come to aid of poor