Official: Hungarian inflationary pressure already the highest in Europe
It is increasingly clear that Hungary’s inflation is the most serious problem in the European Union. If distortions are taken out of the equation, Hungary has the highest inflation of any country in the EU.
It is becoming increasingly clear that Hungary has the most serious inflation problem in the European Union, Portfolio.hu writes, backing up its statement with statistics. Although the official inflation rates in the Baltic countries are even higher than in Hungary, the summer figures already show that the core inflation rate, which has far fewer distortions, is the worst in the country. Hungary’s price index is already by far the highest in the EU, the economic daily says.
The Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices is the highest in the EU for the three Baltic countries, mainly because they allow world price changes in household energy and fuel to have a much stronger impact than other countries, and because they have a very high price shock for unprocessed food, szmo.hu writes.
What is the reason?
Hungary is in fourth place, having overtaken the Czech Republic and Bulgaria in the summer. The statistics also show that the high price index in Hungary is not the result of the reduction in the overhead cuts, as the rise in household energy prices in August is not exceptional in a European comparison. One of the main causes of high inflation in Hungary is the rise in unprocessed food prices.
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In September, annual inflation was over 40 percent, by far the highest in the European Union. The rise in the price of unprocessed food will spill over to processed food in the coming months, so no improvement in the inflation figures can be expected, according to szmo.hu.
Eurostat has also published a filtered indicator that excludes energy and unprocessed food from the calculation, the two items in which Hungary is doing badly. However, the data shows that Hungary has the highest filtered inflation in the EU. It is almost 3 percentage points higher than in Lithuania, which is in second place, and more than two and a half times the EU average.
Source: Portfolio.hu, szeretlekmagyarorszag.hu