The e-Kalathi app, a price-comparison tool long promised by the Cypriot government to help consumers track supermarket prices, is still not operational—despite having received final approval from Apple, according to Aliki Iordanou, Head of the Competition Branch at the Consumer Protection Service of the Energy and Commerce Ministry. 

The app, which was originally set to go live on March 4, 2025, has now entered yet another holding pattern. Iordanou told the Cyprus News Agency that the app will be available to the public “very soon,” following technical adjustments that do not affect the user interface or experience. However, she did not provide a specific date for the launch.

This latest delay comes more than two months after the platform’s official rollout was postponed due to “system security issues” discovered by the Deputy Ministry of Research and Innovation during final-stage testing. At the time, officials said the delay would last “just a few more days.” Since then, the silence has been deafening.

The long and meandering rollout of e-Kalathi has come to symbolize the dysfunction often seen in Cyprus’s public administration. Although the concept was introduced in spring 2023, it wasn’t until February 10, 2025—nearly two years later—that the platform entered its brief pilot phase. By then, Cypriot consumers had endured prolonged inflation without access to the one tool meant to help them compare prices and reduce spending on basic goods.

The delays weren’t merely technical. In 2023, legislative gridlock delayed the necessary bill, with accusations flying between political parties. Parliamentary discussion didn’t begin until September, and the bill only passed in December. Multiple ministers and officials gave public assurances—first for early 2024, then summer 2024, later late 2024, and finally early 2025—none of which were met.

>>The Odyssey of e-kalathi: From 2023 Announcements to the 2025 Pilot Phase<<

Even after the pilot phase in February 2025, which covered 478 essential products across 22 supermarket chains, the platform failed to launch as scheduled. On February 28, Director of the Consumer Protection Service Konstantinos Karayioryis announced another delay, blaming system security bugs. At that point, he said the fix would take “a few more days.” Those days have now become two and a half months.

Today’s update from Iordanou offers little comfort. She explained that, once the platform is set to go live, supermarkets will be notified 2–3 days in advance to upload their product prices to the system. She added that a preliminary notice had already gone out to supermarkets on May 2—yet the app remains offline.

Iordanou also reiterated that 22 supermarket chains with 165 stores are integrated into the system, and that 478 product prices will be updated as changes occur. The platform will also notify administrators in case it detects abnormally high prices, prompting a review with the relevant supermarket.

But even these features—assuming they eventually work—seem underwhelming, given the scale of public expectation and the time taken. The original promise of empowering Cypriot consumers with real-time price data has, for now, been reduced to a case study in missed opportunities and digital inertia.