06.02.09

The on-going crisis and price hikes, as opinions polls indicate, have already hit most Russians in the pocket. Ever more people begin to save on what they eat, to turn backs on delicacies and expensive luxuries in favor of simple and low-priced foods.

In the meantime, psychologists advise one and all against cutting spending at least on two essentials - good night's sleep and food. Otherwise, one runs the risk of plunging into a depressed state of mind, they warn.

According to statistics the KOMKON company has published on the Pravda.ru web-site, two-thirds of Russians have to save on food due to financial constraints they have begun to experience. The people are spending less on meat, fish, sausages and salamis, cheeses, juices and alcohol, confectionaries and frozen semi-finished products. While 35-36 percent of Russians spend less on sweets and alcohol, 47 percent save on meat, and 56 percent, on meat delicacies.

Also, Russians these days dine out far more rarely than they used to just recently. Of those who did go to cafes or restaurants at least from time to time ten percent have cut the number of such visits or canceled them altogether, and 38 percent of the polled are now choosing less expensive outlets and menus.

According to the latest statistics available from Moscow's consumer markets and services department the daily Novyie Izvestia has published the sums urban dwellers spend on buying foods have reduced by 10-20 percent since the beginning of the year.

The executive director of the SovEkon center of analysis, Andrei Sizov, told the daily that "on the food market the producers of meat have proved the hardest-hit." "The variety of products on offer is changing. People turn away from more expensive beef to buy lower priced pork," he said.

A poll by the research center SuperJob indicates that consumers are now reluctant to buy what they regard as redundant luxuries (such as yogurts, sweets and shrimps), or decide to go to cost-cutting supermarkets. Another five percent quit smoking and drinking expensive imported liquors (whiskey and rum). Also, sociologists have encountered replies like this: "I don't drink any more. I quit. Now I'm saving money."

Many of the radio listeners who called the Ekho Moskvy station on Monday morning told the hosts in the studio they had stopped buying semi-finished or pre-cooked frozen meals that made life so much easier for the lazy types and bachelors. As follows from what the callers said, Moscow people are still eating as much as they did before the crisis, even though they have to spend more. But visits to restaurants are certainly less frequent.

Another survey, by the Bashkirova and Partners pollster, has found that those in the lowest income brackets (with a family income of 2,000-4,000 rubles per person) 39.5 percent have had to reconsider their diet, and in the group of retirees one in three (31.6 percent) has to save on food.

The situation is the worst in the Far Eastern Federal District, where nearly half of the polled (58.6 percent) have discovered they cannot afford to buy this or that food. In the most well-doing Central Federal District the share is far lower, 14.8 percent.

"In a word, the gap in the standard of living between the rich and the poor is growing wider. That problem has always been a topical one in Russian society, but in the context of the crisis its social aspect is growing particularly acute," Bashkirova and Partners says in a statement. "In general our poll has exposed a rather unfavorable trend, which may cause an aggravation of the social situation and soaring social protests and conflicts."

The chances of getting meals at work for free or at a discount are slimmer. According to the SuperJub.ru portal, in October 2005 the social package a quarter of the employed Russians were entitled to included free lunch at work. In November 2007 the option was still available to 23 percent, but in January 2009, to a mere 8 percent. The providers of business lunches were the hardest-hit, and enterprises running canteens of their own prefer to raise prices, cut variety and save on products' quality.

Andrei Sabitov, the director of the Lunch-Time company, whose main line of business is providing and delivering lunches to offices and arranging for banquets and corporate parties, is quoted by NEWSru.com as saying the list of corporate clients has shrunk.

"I have lost about half of the contracts, and some others even more, depending on the scale of business. Layoffs are continuing in the banking and construction. Firms have canceled most of their orders - some must have dismissed personnel and others, cut budget expenses.

"Those hired employees who had their employers pay for lunches, those who never paid for themselves, are gone from the list of our clients. Only those who make orders on their own and firms whose business is still going well have stayed," the director of a corporate catering service, Natalya Skorobogatova, is quoted by the website as saying. She says the market of lunch deliveries has affected 30 percent of the medium segment providing meals for office employees, and the lower, less expensive segment, meeting the needs of builders at construction sites first and foremost.In the meantime, psychologists advise against too strict diets.

"Nearly everybody will have to change one's mode of life today, but that is to be done gradually. It is most important to try to refrain from sacrificing such essentials as good sleep and food. Any drastic changes to both might prove harmful to one's mental health," the daily Komsomolskaya Pravda quotes the deputy director of the Serbsky Research Center for Social and Forensic Psychiatry, Zurab Kekelidze, as saying.

Generally speaking, the people have not realized to the full yet the crisis is already here and the changes that have taken place in society are to be adjusted to.

"This does not mean, though, that one and all should start buying cheap foods and walking about the city instead of using the metro," he added.

Visits to psychoanalysts over the past few months have grown by 20 percent, the director of the Serbsky Center, Tatyana Dmitriyeva said the other day. In her opinion, the situation may get still worse towards next spring, when the rate of cases of alcohol-related psychosis will surge up.

"The less money people have, the greater the risk they will try to kill emotional pain with alcohol. Moreover, substandard, bootleg vodka, will get far cheaper, and the people will certainly not miss the chance. That's the surest way to intoxication. Its combination with the moral strain will prove truly horrible. Suicides are possible."

And still, says Dmitriyeva, the people today are prepared for the crisis far better than they were in 1998, so the effects may prove not as disastrous.

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Source: Itar-Tass