Brutal numbers: Hungary is the EU leader in food price rise again

The European Union’s statistical office, the Eurostat, published today unbelievable numbers about the food price rise in Hungary. Without going into the details, we can say that Hungary is again at the top of the list of EU members struggling with the highest food price increase.

According to the today published October inflation report of the Eurostat, food prices rose the most in Hungary last month. That came after a similarly disappointing result regarding the September figures. Based on the paper, average food price inflation in Hungary was 45.2 percent. Meanwhile, in the second country on the list, Lithuania, that rate is much lower, only 33.3 percent. The third is also a Baltic state, Latvia, with 30.5 percent.

Compared to Hungary’s regional competitors the 45.2 percent Hungarian average looks even worse. In Slovakia, the price increase was “only” 26.8 percent in Slovakia and 21.8 percent in Romania, 444.hu wrote. What’s more, that figure is below 14 percent in Hungary’s Western neighbour, Austria.

In Hungary, bread prices rose the most in the last year and reached 82.8 percent in October. That is twice as much as in the other EU member states. The Czech Republic is the nearest to the Hungarian data, but the bread price rise was only 35.4 percent there compared to October 2021.

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The Trappist cheese and the semi-course wheat flour’s price jump was even higher than the bread’s, 95 and 94 percent, consequently. And that is not Eurostat data but the finding of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office.

The government reacted to the worsening trends by introducing new food price caps last week. Now the scheme intended to protect Hungarian citizens from the global crisis includes eggs and potatoes. The government introduced the first food price caps earlier this year before the general elections. The Orbán administration froze the price of granulated sugar, wheat flour, sunflower cooking oil, pork legs, chicken breast, semi-skimmed cow’s milk, and chicken backs on October 15, 2021 level.

However, it seems that the price caps do not help the market and the citizens of Hungary. Many grocery owners already project food shortages for Christmas. Meanwhile, opposition parties argue that the government should have fought back inflation by lowering the VAT on popular food products instead of putting caps on some of them. Experts say that retailers can easily bypass the measure by renaming some products or raising the prices of others.

Read alsoEgg and potato shortage in shops, unaffordable prices in the markets

Source: 444.hu, DNH