Although inflation has fallen significantly since the October 2022 high, prices have not fallen. They have just been rising less quickly.<\/p>\n
Inflation soared in 2022 because oil and gas were in greater demand after the Covid pandemic, and energy prices surged again when Russia invaded Ukraine.<\/p>\n
It then remained well above the 2% target, partly because of higher food prices.<\/p>\n
The figures show food price inflation fell from 3% in the year to April to 2.2% in the year to May.<\/p>\n
The rate of inflation for bread, meat, pasta and vegetables all dropped compared to last year.<\/p>\n
The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board said that British households are struggling to afford beef at the moment, meaning demand for the product has fallen.<\/p>\n
At the same time, while the number of cows being slaughtered has fallen, carcasses weigh more so there’s been oversupply.<\/p>\n
The ONS says that the price of beef and veal (it lumps them both together) rose by 9.3% in May which, admittedly is still high.<\/p>\n
But compared to previous months when prices jumped by as much as 27%, the slowdown is evident.<\/p>\n
However, it can take seven to 13 months for cost increases in the food supply chain to feed through to prices on supermarket shelves.<\/p>\n
The Food and Drink Federation, which represents manufacturers, said that current food prices don’t reflect the impact of the Strait of Hormuz closing.<\/p>\n
It warned that food inflation was likely to rise this year and into 2027.<\/p>\n
Employees who face higher living costs are more likely to push for pay rises. <\/p>\n
Firms who are already facing higher staff costs as a result of increased employer National Insurance contributions and minimum wage hikes are then under pressure to put up their own prices. This can in turn contribute to higher inflation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although inflation has fallen significantly since the October 2022 high, prices have not fallen. They have just been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":661138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-661137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=661137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/661138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=661137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=661137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=661137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}