Overall inflation in the EU shows some tentative signs of moderating in the latest figures for the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) from Eurostat for February 2023. From a peak annual rate of inflation of 11.5% in October 2022, the annual rate fell to 9.9% in February 2023. This is entirely due to a fall in energy costs which also reached their peak in October 2022. Food price inflation, however, continues unabated and increased further in February 2023 to an unheard-of annual rate in recent decades of 19.1%. Unfortunately, this high rate of food price inflation looks set to continue for a further period.
Food price inflation in context
Food prices in the EU have risen dramatically in recent years (in this blog post, food prices include non-alcoholic beverages but exclude alcoholic beverages whose prices have risen at a slightly slower rate). In the EU as a whole food prices were 38% higher in February 2023 relative to the price level in 2015, while the overall price level rose by just 24% during this period.… Read the rest